


Every Day a Chance

by halotolerant



Category: Cucumber | Banana | Tofu (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Compliant, Casual Sex, Closeted Character, Dating, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Kissing, Kittens, M/M, One Night Stands, Second Chances, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3931924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And even if it sticks with Aiden a little while, the way the corner of Frank’s mouth twisted from gentle to grimace as they parted, the wrenching of the lips Aiden knew the taste of – even if that casts a slight shadow, makes Aiden’s next hook-up seem a little pallid by contrast, that’s probably mostly tiredness anyway. More than likely Aiden will forget, in the end, Frank too. This is not going to stick with anybody very long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Summer

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Warnings** :Following on from the canonical events of Banana Episode 7, this fic deals with a character who rejects another character for a romantic/sexual relationship because, to him, the second character is ’too ugly’. Themes of appearance, judging appearance, valuing the conventionally attractive over other people and looks-based bullying, including in a school setting, all occur. Please consider whether this will trigger or upset you before reading. 
> 
> **Other content I would like to warn for:**  
>  \- A (not in canon) character diagnosed with cancer  
> \- Very brief mention of a canonical sexual encounter between a man in his mid twenties and a boy of 16 (which is the age of consent in the UK, where this fic is set)  
> \- Major use of strong language, including instances of words that can be homophobic, misogynist or transphobic, sometimes used without any consciousness of why they might be problematic
> 
>  **Notes** : So yeah, after I had finished Episode 7 of 'Banana', I was desperate to fix it, and in keeping with the canon events seen in the last episode of 'Cucumber'. You could argue that the ending is the point of that episode, but I'm an optimist and an obsessive and I wanted to try, and several weeks and 20k later I have this. 
> 
> Thank you very much to my Beta, **elfwhistletree** , who knows what cats do and where commas go and is marvellous besides <3 
> 
> Title from 'Love Letters' by Metronomy, the amazing song that plays in the episode during Frank and Aiden's kiss *g*

\- - -

SUMMER

\- - -

 

[Day 1]

 

It’s casual. It’s nothing. A snap decision that puts Aiden in a taxi back to a random house for a random threesome. One bloke he fancies, one bloke he doesn’t, but that’s the package deal, that’s how the night turned out. Their first round of sex, the combination of the three of them is fine, is decent enough after Aiden’s moderate level of effort to get it.

 

Come the breathing space, Aiden’s been kissing the good-looking guy for a while. His lips should be sore, numb.

 

Is the kiss he doesn’t want, the one from the weird bloke, the one Aiden shies away from, different from other kisses because of that, or in spite of it?

 

It’s the kiss that changes things.

 

But only into a night that’s gone from ‘acceptable’ to ‘good’. Only into something Aiden might remember rather than another spin of the wheel to forget.

 

_It’s not going to happen_

 

Frank’s fun enough to talk to, to be around, but they’re in different leagues, they could never fit together, and Aiden doesn’t mince his words saying so. It’s better to be honest, even if the truth is, OK, brutal maybe, but Frank won’t let himself be let down easy, so he can’t blame Aiden for a hard fact. And if Aiden’s done the right thing – which is the truth, has to be – the proper thing, the best thing, then he won’t have regrets, and probably soon enough not any memory of this either, in the end.

 

And even if it sticks with Aiden a little while, the way the corner of Frank’s mouth twisted from gentle to grimace as they parted, the wrenching of the lips Aiden knew the taste of – even if that casts a slight shadow, makes Aiden’s next hook-up seem a little pallid by contrast, that’s probably mostly tiredness anyway. More than likely Aiden will forget, in the end, Frank too. This is not going to stick with anybody very long.

 

\- - -

 

[3 Days Later]

 

“I see I don’t have to ask how your weekend went.” Charles says, having finally made it over the carpet to the chair at his small dining table. He collapses down, sighing, pushing his zimmer frame away and squaring the chair up with a final effort so he can reach his cutlery.

 

“Eh? Pardon?” Aiden’s sitting in Charles’ other dining chair, his eyes on what he’s writing in Charles’ Personalised Care Event Log. Charles is pretty steady on his feet, if slow, and doesn’t like being helped or watched obviously.

 

“There you are, you see? Head in the clouds, smile on your face, not a thought for the measly real world and the rest of us.” Charles gives a second, exaggerated sigh and throws up his skinny, liver-spotted arms. “You don’t have to tell me a thing, I know what happened to you.”

 

“You do, do you?” Aiden gets up and fetches the bowl of soup out of the microwave, the plate of toast, the apple slices and the glass of water. These supported flats have a decent kitchen space, all things considered, and Charles isn’t one of the ones who gets confused and tries to cook for himself if he’s left alone, so the place stays fairly clean. Charles has three tablets that go with this meal, and Aiden’s got them ready in their plastic cup. He’s allocated twenty minutes per resident for preparing, feeding and cleaning up their lunches, and he’s learnt every time-saving method he can. It’s not easy work, but he likes it, the rhythm of it, the satisfaction that sometimes comes even alongside all the shit, literal and otherwise.

 

Charles grins at him, and does not start eating his soup. Instead he leans on the table and points at Aiden, and gives a cackling laugh. “You met someone, my boy. Oh, I don’t mean just any someone, just one of your casual weekend pieces of trouser action. You met someone you’re still thinking about on Monday. Think I went through twenty years in the Royal Air Force and wound up unable to spot that look on a man’s face?”

 

“Please eat the soup, Charles.” Aiden gestures at it. “It’ll get cold.”

 

Charles raises his eyebrow. Charles is 89, slow moving and hard of hearing, but sharper than half the blokes you’d find in a trawl round the average pub any given night.

 

“Tell me about him, and I’ll eat,” Charles offers.

 

Aiden throws up his hands now. “Nothing happened!” He’s half laughing. He sits back in his chair and folds his arms. “Nothing but sex, OK? And you don’t want to hear about that, come on, not queer stuff.”

 

“Who the bloody hell cares about what goes where?” Charles picks up his spoon, but doesn’t do anything with it other than point it at Aiden’s head. “You’re my window on the world of the young and I want to hear about someone having fun, someone getting to put it about a bit, man or woman or whatever else you can be nowadays. Now, if you want to respect this man enough to keep his secrets, that’s fine by me, but at least give me some anecdote that isn’t about bowels or dentures or the latest episode of _Bargain Hunt_.”

 

Aiden sighs. “Eat your toast. I’ll tell you about the stag night that got kicked out of every bar on Canal Street last week, and what they were wearing. But honestly, nothing happened to me.”

 

Charles’ bushy white eyebrow rises again, and holds in place as he slowly moves his spoon into the bowl, conceding nothing.

 

\- - -

 

[5 Days Later]

 

Jack’s had yet another dramatic breakup, and Aiden arrives at his flat with a Chinese takeaway and some beer as usual, and finds Harry there already – he’s got Jack past the listing-the-massive-personality-flaws-of-the-recent-ex stage and onto making vows about what he’ll not just settle for in all future relationships.

 

“I mean, I’m not a idiot, right?” Jack declares, half way down his third can. “I know there’s no such thing as ‘the one’ or any of that bollocks. I just want someone who I can fucking trust in a room alone with my wallet, is that so much to ask?”

 

“You said it.” Aiden tells him, taking another drink. “But who wants a relationship anyway? Who the fuck needs a relationship in the age of the smartphone? You can get a shag in five minutes from anywhere in this city, if you’re not picky about it.”

 

“Says the man who thinks, quote, ‘I’m not sure about Benedict Cumberbatch’?” Harry puts a hand over his heart and rolls his eyes. “You’re the pickiest fucking man in Manchester, Aiden.”

 

“Aiden’s hot, he can be picky, the fucker,” Jack moans. “Whereas mere mortals like me…”

 

Aiden and Harry team up to drown him out and get him focused on _Match of the Day_ instead. Later, when Jack’s dozed off, they’re still talking, and wind up doing his washing up for him before they leave.

 

“Do you think,” Harry says – they’ve been chatting about nothing in particular for a while, Harry washing, Aiden drying – “Do you think the people, the couples who stick together for, like, sixty years and don’t cheat and say they’re soulmates and in love, do you think they actually think that? Or are they lying? Or is it true for them?”

 

“You sound fucking gay, you twat,” Aiden tells him, and they have a fight with the drying up cloths.

 

“You OK, mate?” Harry asks, when they’ve let themselves out of Jack’s front door and are walking down the dark street towards the bus stop.

 

“Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

“Dunno.” Harry shrugs. “You just seem a bit… Nah, whatever. As long as you’re OK.”

 

\- - -

 

[10 Days Later]

 

“He didn’t keep you waiting long,” the guy in the yellow hoodie – Dean, Aiden thinks he’s called Dean – shouts in Aiden’s ear. The music is pounding out of the speakers in the front room of this otherwise fairly normal townhouse, and what Aiden doesn’t get is why the neighbours who are gradually appearing in the road outside are all smiling and hugging each other and not apparently complaining at all.

 

“Who?” Aiden shouts back.

 

“Freddie!” Dean’s grinning at him. “I mean it was only, like, last week he turned you down? He usually keeps people waiting longer, makes clear he’s got standards and… something else. I think he said tenacity? He talks like that lot.”

 

“What?” Aiden’s shouting, when he’s saved by the reappearance of said Freddie, fit, blond and 24, who’d messaged him on Grindr two hours ago asking if he fancied a party and giving this address. Freddie hasn’t mentioned them meeting before, and Aiden certainly doesn’t remember it, so probably this Dean kid is just off his face or confusing him with someone else or who the fuck cares, anyway?

 

Freddie is the hottest fucking piece of arse in the room, one of the fittest blokes Aiden’s seen this year, and everyone here knows it – Aiden can see it in every look and every glance their way. Even the couple of girls and one or two guys present who don’t fancy men still know it objectively, know that Aiden’s rubbing up against the absolute fucking jackpot.

 

Questions really aren’t necessary. He’s here, Freddie’s here, they’ll fuck later. Sweet and easy, and probably enough to drive everything else out of Aiden’s head.

 

\- - -

 

[11 Days Later]

 

“He calls it a ‘collective’,” Freddie’s saying, leaning back across the bed, head resting against Aiden’s hip, at right angles to him, cheeks still just a little flushed, lips swollen.

 

Aiden explores with his hand, tugs at Freddie’s nipple until he’s batted away. “So, what, you all split the bills and, what? Fucking grow things in the garden? Do chanting and tantric yoga? When do you become his nineteenth wife and start wearing a bonnet?”

 

“Shut up.” Freddie sits up, goes to his bedside table and scrabbles for something – cigarettes, and a lighter. Enough of Freddie’s shit is here that Aiden had figured out this was where he lived, but Aiden had kind of assumed that meant this house was his parents’ and he was home from Uni or something.

 

“Henry still pays the bills,” Freddie explains. “And he’ll keep doing it, now we’ve got his job back. That was what the party was for. It’s a long story. Anyway, now he’s all about the queer brotherhood - sisterhood, siblinghood - whatever. So you can hang out, is what I’m saying.”

 

It’s not a question. Freddie speaks with full confidence that Aiden won’t have had enough of him yet. And it’s true – they fucked last night but Freddie was on his front and Aiden wants to see what happens to that face when Aiden bottoms out in his arse, see what expression goes with those noises.

 

And when they go down to the communal breakfast unfolding in the kitchen – bacon and eggs and hash browns and waffles and muesli and two different actual fucking flavours of maple syrup – everyone looks at them standing together, at how Freddie hasn’t kicked Aiden out, and they’re practically applauding.

 

“I could get used to this,” Aiden admits, and reaches for a plate.

 

\- - -

 

[20 Days Later]

 

“What? You didn’t just leave him there?” Aiden’s laughing, rolling onto his back against the sun-warmed blanket, feeling the warmth and the light on his limbs, bare under the sky.

 

Next to him, Freddie sits up, gesticulating. “What else was I supposed to do? Blow him? After that? I don’t fucking think so!”

 

Freddie’s stripped down to his kecks too, and frankly the little scrap of tight, blue fabric only makes him more naked, clinging round his curves and bringing out the porcelain-pale of his skin. Freddie’s been out here as long as Aiden, and Aiden’s tan and pink and sweating a little, but Freddie’s still pale as milk.

 

Freddie’s like a statue, like one of those Greek statues, sculpted marble, hard, perfect. Properly beautiful, and he’s still not kicked Aiden out, and Aiden actually had a total stranger come up to him when they were out on the scene together one night and ask him what his secret is.

 

That ought to be enough to make anyone feel satisfied.

 

“So, go on.” Freddie’s sitting up, lighting a cigarette. Aiden pulls back a little. He’d said, when he’d brought it up, that he was OK with Freddie smoking outside, but he still spends a decent portion of his working day adjusting the oxygen flow for Mr Bedford’s emphysema, and he just… It’s not like he likes the smell, anyway.

 

He could tell Freddie that, but he’s not the type to go around trying to change anyone else’s life. No one likes that.

 

“Go on,” Freddie prompts again. “I told mine. Weirdest threesome you’ve ever had.”

 

“Does it have to be a threesome?” Dean’s supposedly trimming some beans for dinner at the garden table, mostly on his phone. “Because I was with these four blokes once, and…”

 

“Has to be a threesome.” Freddie declares. Then he grins, the devilish-beautiful smile, hooded eyes and promise. “We can do foursomes and moresomes later. I want to know.”

 

Aiden shrugs, sits up. The sun dips behind a cloud and out again, blinding bright. The garden smells of cut grass and earth and the lavender bushes Henry says Lance thought of as ‘a sort of horticultural pun, I suppose’ and Freddie’s long and lovely beside him.

 

This is now, and it ought to be more powerful than the past.

 

“Was a time,” Aiden says, and rubs a hand over his face. “Wasn’t even that long ago – like, two weeks, a bit more? Twenty days? Anyway, I was in The Lodge and I saw this bloke, quite fit, bit like the one with the beard on _Looking_? Anyway he was with this… this other bloke, and he went to the bar, and I went to the first bloke and I said ‘Are you his carer or what?’ and…”

 

“Fuck! You went with some bloke and his carer? Dirty bastard!” Dean’s gone wide-eyed with approval.

 

“No! He wasn’t actually… I was just pointing out that… that he was ugly, you know? Like, not… just weird ugly. Anyway, first bloke points out that this guy, he’s going to work like a dog and get kicked out of bed straight after and still have a good time, so I went back with them both and, yeah.”

 

“I hate to inform you of this, Aiden,” Freddie says sweetly. “But that is possibly the most crap anecdote I have ever actually heard. How was it even weird?”

 

“Whatever, fuck off.” Aiden reaches for him, slaps his arse, all smooth under its tight blue covering. Freddie hates that. Freddie genuinely hates that, and for a moment Aiden thinks – hopes – he’ll hit out in return. Aiden’s pulse is racing, and he feels like some vigorous movement.

 

But Freddie rolls away and huffs, gets up on his feet and stalks off inside, declaring loudly that he’s come to help with the food.

 

“You can tell me it if you want,” Dean is saying. Dean’s applying the scissors to the beans now, it seems and he gestures with them, generous. “Try the story again and it might come out better?”

 

“You don’t want to hear it.”

 

“No, but I’ve got my music in so I wouldn’t have to listen. Have a practice, I don’t mind.”

 

Aiden bites at his lip, frowning. “I said I’d tell that story, you know. I told him I’d tell it to people.”

 

“What?” Dean’s between the beans and his iPhone, and mostly watching Nelly and Raymond bringing out more chairs from the house for dinner.

 

Aiden shakes his head. “Thing is, I haven’t actually told anyone.”

 

“That’s OK,” Dean says. He’s not even looking in Aiden’s direction, and Aiden can’t tell if the words are totally absent or remotely considered. “You know it, anyway. Hey! Can we get some crisps out here? Don’t hog them all!”

 

“I’ll get ‘em,” Aiden says, and goes inside. It’s getting cold for sunbathing anyway.

 

In the house he makes a detour to the downstairs loo. There are so many fucking toothbrushes in this house. He’s leant over the basin and splashed water in his face before he’s realised it and then he’s looking at himself in the mirror, at the water running down and his look of surprise, the pulse beating hard in his throat.

 

\- - -

 

[23 Days Later]

 

“I haven’t told you how I met my wife,” Charles says, out of the blue one lunchtime. He’s been a bit quiet for Aiden’s last couple of shifts, enough that he mentioned it to his supervisor, wondering if the bloke had another catheter infection brewing, but she’d said he’d been bright enough with other people.

 

“No, mate, you haven’t.” Aiden puts his pen down and smiles, encouraging. “How did it happen, then?”

 

Charles makes a considering face, like he’s evaluating Aiden’s worthiness to hear what he has to say. Or maybe he’s just staring at the love bite on Aiden’s neck, which Freddie had been irritatingly insistent about and for no reason Aiden could figure out; the whole house knew they were fucking, and only Henry would blush at any evidence of it.

 

“It was during the War,” Charles says. “I can’t help that that’s a bloody cliché, because when I was your age, it just was the War, you see? I had two days embarkation leave here in Manchester. Well I came from Tonbridge, so I couldn’t get home and see my mother, thank heavens. I went out for few drinks in Manchester instead, planning to get drunk and then get myself some company, if you catch my drift. Pay, if I had to. But, I don’t know what happened exactly, I ended up staggering out of some hole in the wall with barely an hour to get my unit. No girls for me, I had to get to the station.

 

“And that was where I saw her. Just sitting on the platform on the next bench along from mine. My God, she was just… When I saw her it was like a light breaking through the clouds. She wasn’t any more beautiful than any of the other girls I’d been with, and she was wearing some dreadful drab tweed utility outfit, but I went and sat next to her and I said ‘Hello, we’re going to be married before the end of the year.’ She left me with a flea in my ear, as well she might.”

 

Aiden waits, but Charles just picks up his spoon and starts in on his soup.

 

“Well? What happened next?”

 

Charles grins. “I asked her for her address. I said ‘I’m shipping out, let me write you a letter, just that, see if I can convince you. I’ll probably be dead soon, at worst you have to read some letters.’ She told me I was welcome to try – I don’t think she thought I had any intention of actually doing it. Well, that was in February of 1941. By that Christmas we were husband and wife. Had to spend that Christmas in two different bloody countries, but all the same.”

 

Aiden had had his own lunch earlier, before his shift. It turns over now, unpleasantly shifting in his stomach. “Bit of a crazy thing to do, wasn’t it? All that, for someone you’d not even met properly? On what? A moment? A feeling?”

 

Charles shrugs. “Don’t I have the blood pressure tablet to take now?”

 

“But…” Aiden looks away. “Yeah. Here you are.”

 

Charles necks the tablet with a well-practised gulp. “Do you ever think about your future?”

 

Aiden’s packing up the Personalised Care Event Log. “Been thinking a bit about going back to college, getting some more qualifications. Maybe apply for a Nursing degree in the end,” he says, surprising himself. He’s not told anyone that, not done more about it than lingered over some university websites wincing at fees.

 

“Heh. Male nurse. They’ll call you a fairy,” Charles tells him, and wheezes with laughter.

 

“I will swap your tomato soup tins for mulligatawny, Charles. Don’t you think I wouldn’t.”

 

“Quite right.” Charles nods. “If you worry about what other people think of you, the one thing you’re guaranteed is a miserable bloody time.”

 

\- - -

 

[29 Days Later]

 

“Lance loved you and you treated him like shit!” the woman who turned up ten minutes ago shouts at Henry. Aiden had been somewhat occupied on the lawn with Freddie when she arrived, and hasn’t followed the details but it seems like she worked with Lance, and clearly she’s not a Henry fan.

 

Aiden and Freddie beat a swift retreat to Freddie’s room, as some of the older guys come out to talk to Henry and hug him.  

 

“He’s never going to get over it until he moves somewhere else,” Freddie mutters after a while, discussing Henry’s life choices. Again. Freddie has a whole speech on how he doesn’t care what Henry does, but of all the people streaming through this place Aiden reckons there’s only Henry’s sister and that bloke Cliff who might know more about Henry than Freddie does.

 

“I just don’t get why he’s shacking us all up here,” Freddie continues. “I mean, I do, because Henry likes his little nests and feeling safe, but I don’t get why he feels safe here. I’d leave the fucking place.”

 

“What do you want, Freddie? What is it that you want to do? In the end?” Aiden’s sprawled forwards over Freddie’s bed, messing about on Fruit Ninja on his phone. Freddie’s on his laptop.

 

“What?” Freddie’s frowning at his screen. “What the actual fuck?” he mutters at it, and types something quickly.

 

“Like, jobs. What do you want to be, to do, like, later?”

 

Freddie’s eyes narrow. “I want to spend my entire life heating up frozen pastry crap for the canteen of a third-rate firm. What do you think?”

 

“I don’t know!” Aiden raises his hands in surrender. “It’s why I fucking asked!”

 

“No one knows what they want to be.” Freddie jabs at his keyboard again. “There are only about four jobs anyone’s ever actually heard of and most people aren’t that, most people are Quality Customer Assurance Analysts or some bollocks like that, and they never know until they get there. Don’t be boring.”

 

“I was wondering about going back to college,” Aiden says quietly, trying the words out. “Getting what I’d need for a Nursing degree. I could barely afford it, but there’s loans, and if I made it, then afterwards…”

 

“Hmmm.” Freddie clicks again. “There. Fucker.”

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Freddie flips the screen round. “Twat from my old school tagged me in pictures from when I was fucking twelve years old. Think I don’t get enough creepy wanks over my Grindr and all that without having pictures out there of when I was actually that young?”

 

Aiden puts his phone down for a moment. “Have you been with a lot of older guys?”

 

He’s asked Freddie about any number of things and Freddie’s answered like a sphinx or a late-night chatline every time. But this one turns the tips of his ears pink.

 

“What?” he says, in that blank way that means he’s not answering. “Do you know the ages of every guy you’ve pulled?”

 

“No.” Aiden picks his phone up again. Most guys he knew the age, yeah, because of Grindr – some add or subtract, sure, but usually stick within five years. But even in 2015 not every shag comes through an app, or has a profile on a website. Frank, for random example, isn’t on Grindr that Aiden can see. Which maybe isn’t so surprising on a service where you get judged on your photo - even going the headless torso route wouldn’t help Frank at all - but Brewood, Staffordshire - as far as Aiden can tell from Google Maps - is a long way from everything and surely some guys would go for proximity? If only to have alternatives from the sheep. The baa-curious sheep…

 

“What’s funny?”

 

“Nothing,” Aiden says quickly. “Not you.”

 

\- - -

 

[36 Days Later]

 

Aiden’s Mum looks tired when she meets him off the train at Port Talbot Parkway. She talks about the weekend and who’ll be there – Grandad’s 75th birthday, lots of family in town – but there’s something troubling her, he can tell.

 

Back home she gets him sat on the sofa and with a cup of tea, double checks the upstairs for either of his sisters, Amy and Andrea, who could listen in, and then explains. His Auntie Beth, her sister, has breast cancer. There’s a good chance of getting rid of it, since it was caught early, but it’s a long road, his Mum says, surgery and then probably chemotherapy, all with side effects. The surgery’s going ahead almost at once, and Aiden’s Mum is taking in Beth’s three daughters for a bit while she gets over it – they only live a few streets away, usually. Problem is, even when the system catches up and gets Beth’s benefits to her, it’ll still be tight.

 

“I can do more shifts, easy, don’t worry, I’ll help.” He gathers her into a hug. He’s been physically bigger than her for a decade, but this is the first time she’s felt fragile to him.

 

For a long time, when he was a kid, she was coping single-handed. Aiden’s ten years older than his half-sisters or Beth’s kids, even though Beth’s older than his Mum. She had Aiden at 16, having been convinced she’d found eternal true love – that’s all she’ll ever tell him about his father, bar that they’re better off without him.

 

‘Grandad’ with the birthday is the father of the guy Aiden’s Mum married, who Aiden’s always been more than happy to call Dad. He was good news, and he died in a motorbike accident five years ago.

 

Aiden’s Mum has made Grandad a cake with a red icing tractor on. Grandad was a farmer once, apparently, not that he talks about it much. Whilst Aiden’s known him he’s been on the sick, and then his pension, with a lung condition from damp hay. That’s the one thing Grandad will say - that the job was supposed to be something better than the mines, and it wasn’t, it still laid him low.

 

But something has to go on a cake, and the kids will like the tractor. They like hearing stories about animals too, and nowadays Grandad doesn’t seem to mind telling them so much.

 

“I met a farmer, the other day,” Aiden finds himself saying, when he’s standing the next day in Grandad’s living room, a plate of cake in his hand, trying to steer clear of the kids dashing about and duck his head away from the bundles of balloons. “From Staffordshire way. Brewood. But he didn’t say what he farmed. He was skinny, like. Can’t be pushing many wheelbarrows about. Maybe he’s in battery chickens or something. Nothing to do but press buttons.”

 

“Not often you meet farmers in Manchester, I’ll bet,” Grandad says, sounding pleased. “Where did you meet him?”

 

“He was on a stag do,” Aiden tells him, truthfully.

 

“Ah, I know what you young men get up to! No need to tell me more! A nudge is as good as a wink to me.” Grandad grins. “Which reminds me, I was wondering if we’d see Mandy with you today. She not around any more?”

 

Aiden swallows. “Not at the moment.”

 

“Well count yourself lucky you’re not a farmer. Bloody hard to go courting anyone, as a farmer. Lonely life.”

 

Beth’s kids turn up at the house before Aiden leaves. Rachel, Natalia and Shelley, wide eyed and scared, and he shows them how to make origami birds for a bit before his train.

 

\- - -

 

[39 Days Later]

 

“Where were you again?” Freddie asks.

 

“Wales. Family.” Aiden reaches for the mustard. They’re in the kitchen at Henry’s, making sandwiches at eleven at night after a marathon of reunion fucking. Freddie’s come face is as perfect as the rest of him. Aiden should have so many endorphins coursing through him right now, and maybe he does, maybe it feels this way because they’re blunted by the weekend, by tiredness, whatever.

 

“Oh.” Freddie blinks. “They all OK?”

 

“Yeah. Fine. You want Coke or Fanta?”

 

\- - -

 

[42 Days Later]

 

Aiden stops in the street. “Really, here? What about Twist?”

 

Freddie frowns at him. “What the fuck? No. The Lodge is much better and I’ve not been there in weeks. And neither have you, so you can stand some variety.”

 

“Well, are we going here or not?” Jack’s impatient, and Aiden’s not seen him in so long – hasn’t seen enough of any of his friends since the thing with Freddie started - and doesn’t want to piss him off any more, and so he goes in, through into the clean glow of artfully distressed brick and shabby-chic furnishing. 

 

He’s never really like The Lodge. It was random of him to have gone there back in July, he could so easily not have done; wishes now he never had.

 

“Are you seriously cruising right next to me?” Freddie is asking. They’re leaning against the bar and everything from the tilt of Freddie’s hip to the arch of his eyebrow is perfectly poised; he’s mock-acting indignation, signaling approval, flirting with the air surrounding him. He doesn’t mind Aiden looking elsewhere because he knows, genuinely knows, that he’s the hottest thing in here.

 

“What?” Aiden’s pulse is rushing - he needs more alcohol, and for his stupid brain to shut up. Maybe more than alcohol tonight, maybe he ought to see what he can get off Dave. He crowds into Freddie’s side, rubbing up against him. Freddie is so fucking beautiful.

 

“You’re scoping out the room like you’re expecting a fucking sniper.” Freddie’s hips push him away, just hard enough to be a reproach. “What’s your problem with this place?”

 

“My only problem right now is that you’re not in the toilets with me down your throat,” Aiden tells him, groping firmly at Freddie’s arse, and Freddie pouts – he hates that, he really hates it – and that burn of anger makes it so much better, up against the cubicle partition, Freddie putting an effort in, on his knees; a mouth, the top of his head, blond hair, could be almost anyone.

 

\- - -

 

[47 Days Later]

 

“You didn’t have to come down again, you know.” Aiden’s Mum says. She’s carrying a paper cup of tea very carefully in front of her – the hospital canteen had been out of lids.

 

“No worries.” Aiden would give her a cuddle, but he doesn’t want to jog the tea. “What do you want me to tell the girls?”

 

“They know Beth’s getting medicine that might make her poorly before it makes it her well. You can tell them that again, and that the doctor said she probably won’t have to be here more than a night or two, just whilst they get the side effects under control. And it’s not like I need to stay with her all the time, but she hates hospitals so much.” She looks over at him, smiling a little. “I am glad you’re here, now you are.”

 

“I was due some annual leave anyway.” Aiden reminds her, and lets her give him the bus fare, because he caught the first train after she called him and didn’t get any change.

 

He’d texted Freddie to say he had a family thing. Freddie had sent back a sadface emoticon and that was it.

 

Aiden’s sisters and his cousins are half-heartedly playing _Dance Dance Revolution_ when he gets to the house. At 13, his cousin Rachel can be trusted to manage them in the house for a couple of hours but she’s clearly feeling crap too. And she’s visibly unsatisfied with the update he gives to reassure the younger girls.

 

Aiden stays with her, gets her to help him make the fish fingers and chips for dinner. “Hey,” he finds himself saying. “Do you know what you call a sheep that likes men sheep and lady sheep? Baa-curious.”

 

“That’s appalling,” Rachel informs him, but she grins a little. He only meant it for her – he doubts the others would get it, kind of hopes not – but apparently he’s been overhead.  

 

“What’s yellow and dangerous?” Aiden’s sister Amy pipes up from the table. “Shark infested custard!”

 

“What’s green and invisible?” Natalia offers. Then she holds out her cupped hands to him. “This lettuce.”

 

“What’s black and white and read all over?” Shelley asks, enunciating the words carefully. Her voice is a little watery but she’s looking brighter. “A newspaper!”

 

Which is maybe why Aiden finds himself just after ten at night, girls in bed, stories read and a few more tears soothed through, sitting on his Mum’s sofa watching some crap about police raids on the TV and scrolling through his phone to Frank’s un-asked for number, which he never bothered to delete.

 

**> Hi. This is random, but you know any good jokes for my cousins/sisters age 7-13? They’re having bad day**

 

It’s lunchtime the next day when the reply comes, no real text, just a link to a website full of Disney Princess themed jokes, which seems to be a sub-collection from a general site for children-suitable humour. The girls love it.

 

**> Cheers mate**

 

Frank doesn’t send any answer. Which is a relief, really.


	2. Autumn

\- - -

AUTUMN

\- - -

 

[51 Days Later]

 

“Oh, Tomasz and I shagged while you were away.” Freddie says, like he’s announcing some forgotten detail about the weather forecast.

 

“Fair enough,” Aiden says, after a pause, not letting himself look up, and gets back to washing lettuce in Henry’s kitchen sink.

 

He’s annoyed, of course he is, because what does it make people think about him, if Freddie’s gone elsewhere? And with a guy the whole house knows? Although at least Tomasz is good-looking, and presumably older than Aiden thought he was. Presumably. Hopefully.

 

But, fair enough. This is what happens. Him and Freddie, however you want to define that, have lasted over a month already, way beyond expectations, and on Aiden’s side that’s at least partly to do with all the free food in this weird house. Aiden’s not played away, but he’s done it in relationships before, he’s got no moral high ground.

 

“And how about you?” Freddie is asking, licking a spoon from the mayonnaise jar, eyes wide, tongue pink against the metal. “You’re not telling me your ‘family thing’ actually was a family thing and not a booty call?”

 

Aiden shrugs. “Had to help my Mum with something. No action for me.”

 

He’s not about to go shagging around in Port Talbot – that’s why he left, after all, so as not to do that. But the truth is he doesn’t remember even looking much at blokes whilst he was there, or on the journey up or down. He was busy, obviously, and concerned for Auntie Beth and his Mum and the girls, but usually when he’s stressed some shagging, or phone sex, or at least flirting, is soothing. For a boyfriend, or someone approaching that category, he’s made himself look away in the past, but that’s not where he and Freddie are, and he didn’t make any choice – he just didn’t feel it.

 

“Hey, you’re pissed off.” Freddie surveys him for a moment, mouth falling just a little open, and grins. “Come upstairs and take it out on my arse. You know you want to.”

 

Aiden turns slowly, leans in and kisses him, bites his lower lip.

 

And does go upstairs. Because that’s fair enough too. And they both know this is probably more or less the last time this is going to happen between them.

 

It’s sort of nice, actually, the ease of leaving a guy who doesn’t care he’s being left, when you don’t really care you’re leaving him. Makes the break-up sex straightforward.

 

Freddie’s beautiful, and hot as sin, and Aiden can walk away from him without a backwards glance, so what chance would anyone else have?

 

\- - -

 

[58 Days Later]

 

Aiden’s making his way down the road from the care home to the bus stop. There’s the first couple of fallen leaves on the pavement underfoot, and kids in school uniform scrambling and shrieking about under the horse chestnut on the corner.

 

Despite how long it’s been since Aiden was in school himself, there’s still something about September that always feels like a fresh start to him. Like the starchy scratch of new clothes, and clean, long pencils and full pens, and empty notebooks; a new chance to try again. The time for getting back down to hard graft and cold reality, after the long dream of summer.

 

Summers can be a bit weird, a bit unreal. This one has been, for sure – a _collective_ , for fuck’s sake, what was that even about? And Freddie, iceberg Freddie with too much going on under the surface.

 

And Frank, back in July, which is a minor detail and not worth remembering. That recollection can just go on the pile too, with all the other strangeness and be forgotten - raked up and put in the bonfire with the rest of summer.

 

It’s not like Aiden can even remember what they actually did together, that night. What any of them did exactly, himself or Frank or the other bloke, whatever his name was – Kevin? Steven? Something like that. He recalls a tangle of bodies in the bed, and that the sheets had smelt near overpoweringly of fabric softener. There was a blur of alcohol over the movements of hands and mouths, and the urgency of sex that made touches more important for what they were than where they came from. Sure, he’d started out pushing Frank away, and had woken up the next morning spooned round him, but all the rest is a fog at best.

 

He can remember the times with Freddie far more clearly, and does remember them, thank you very much, when he’s looking for inspiration for a wank, which is not often – he can still get someone else’s skin against his wherever and whenever he wants, the joy of technology. He can choose from every face in Manchester, browse half the population of the world and take his pick.

 

Thinking about Frank doesn’t make him aroused, it makes him feel… well, whatever that sinking weird heat is. It’s not him feeling shitty, obviously, because he has nothing to apologise for, no regrets, but it’s not good.

 

After that one link to the jokes website, Frank has never texted again. Aiden had been braced for it, for another barrage of clever lines or painfully stupid ones, had come up with a bunch of theoretical easy let-downs. He’d wished he hadn’t texted, because it would start the guy up again. But there’s been nothing.

 

Aiden did leave Frank crying. That’s a memory that won’t shake. A new one to catch on the corners of, in the twist of that mouth.

 

He was only being honest, he reminds himself.

 

And anyway, it’s a new season now, a new term, a new year. Going back to college is out of the question whilst Mum needs money from him, but he’s got some prospectuses, and a lady he emailed at a university admissions department had some suggestions for experience he could get to strengthen his eventual application. He’s got his notes from that laid out in in a list in a brand new notebook, on a clean fresh page.

 

When he gets home, Aiden feels restless, kind of hungry, and not for food. He goes out on the town, finds one of his Grindr favourites, hot as fuck, up from Birmingham for the weekend and in the same club as him. Jase and Dave are out too, they give Aiden whistles of approval as he follows Birmingham Bloke out, heading for his hotel room.

 

It’s not a short walk, and Aiden finds himself pulling his coat tighter round himself; there’s a chill coming in the air. Summer really is over.

 

\- - -

 

[69 Days Later]

 

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Aiden says, and presses his mobile close to his ear, trying to catch every last breath that comes in response.

 

“What the fuck?” he hears her say.

 

“I’m sorry, Mandy,” he says again. His voice has gone a bit shaky, and he grips the arm on the chair where he’s sitting. “I treated you like shit, I know, I’m sorry. I was just… I wanted it to be real, was the thing. I wanted to want you.”

 

“So that makes it fucking fine, does it?”

 

“No. It doesn’t. I’m sorry.”

 

“You know, if you’d just wanted someone, some girl, to hang on your arm for your family to see, I’d have done that. You didn’t have to fucking lie to me. I would have helped. We were mates once. I didn’t even fucking like you that way, not at first, not till you pushed it on me, made all those castles in the sky and talked about getting married. You’re the one made me let you break my heart, Aiden.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’,” she parrots back at him in a whiny voice, but she’s not shouting anymore. He hears a deep sigh. “What’s brought all this on then, after five years? You’re not going through fucking Alcoholics Anonymous steps are you?”

 

“No! Nothing like that! I just… I told someone about you and I said how I had never apologised and I suppose then I thought, why not?”

 

“You told someone…?”

 

“Not _told them_ told them, not properly, just… I just said there was a person I’d hurt. I was making a point. Didn’t want them to think they could trust me. Been thinking about it since, was all.”

 

“Fuck, Aiden…” she trails off with a long breath.

 

“Are you OK?” he asks, after a moment or two of mostly silence.

 

“Well, I don’t know. I’m married. Last year, nice ceremony, we had a Take That tribute band play the reception. I’m pregnant. Next year I’ll qualify for an extra day of holiday per year at the call centre. Life’s a fucking dream – is that what you want me to say?”

 

“I didn’t mean to…”

 

“I can forgive you, Aiden, if that’s what you need? But I don’t have to talk to you. You have a nice life.” She hangs up on him.

 

He cradles his phone in his hands for a while, just breathing.

 

Thing is, he hurt her and she’s fine. Could be worse. She’s fine. People are fine. They get over things. They do. They will.

 

\- - -

 

[87 Days Later]

 

Aiden’s standing in a hallway at the care home, waiting for the undertakers to finish packing up Mr Bedford on their little stretcher thing, so he can go in and clean up the mess, change the sheets before Mr Bedford’s son gets here from London.

 

He’s going to be here way past the end of his shift, for sure, and he’s looking up later bus times on his phone when the message pops up.

 

_> Meet up again handsome? No minger baggage this time!_

 

Aiden stares down at the profile picture that’s come up on his phone. The picture wouldn’t ring a bell at once, but the message confirms it – this ‘Kevan’ is the bloke with the beard from The Lodge, from July, from the threesome. The bloke who’d got Frank to pay sixty quid and three beers for the privilege of shagging him, the bloke who’d caught Aiden’s eye that night and who had talked him into sharing. The bloke Aiden really wishes he’d walked the fuck away from, because how much more bloody simple would that have been? Because only wankers grow beards any more.  

 

 _You his carer?_ – That was what Aiden had said to him, gesturing to Frank in the scrum at the bar.

 

 _Don’t be mean,_ the bloke, Kevan, had told him. _It’s not attractive._

 

 _You’re telling me,_ Aiden had answered, laughing. _Even the barman won’t look at him twice._

 

Aiden could have walked away then, and why hadn’t he? Kevan hadn’t been so hot, not really, and Frank had simply been in the way. Aiden could have done better that night – any night – and so he can’t for the life of him figure out why he stayed, why he even noticed them in the first place.

 

Aiden can’t think, now, why he’d have looked at Kevan twice. But perhaps it had been the contrast between Kevan and Frank that had drawn his attention, not either of them in particular.

He blocks Kevan’s profile on the app, and shoves his phone back in his pocket.

 

He leans his head back against the care home corridor wall, against the peeling flock wallpaper that smells of cabbage and piss, seeped into the fabric of the building.

 

What did Kevan do, after all, that Aiden didn’t? Call Frank ugly, shag him, dump him – all Aiden added to that list was half a bottle of cheap Shiraz.

 

And Kevan didn’t make Frank cry.

 

There’s a stain on Mr Bedford’s floor that won’t shift no matter how Aiden scrubs at it. Once Mr Bedford’s last earthly possessions are binned or taken away, the home will have to fork out for new carpet. Or, as will probably happen, just shift the bed to cover it.

 

If the whole world is crude and cruel and crap, why should Aiden feel like he’s got any responsibility to be any other way?

 

That evening, Aiden showers for a long time and then heads back out into Manchester city centre. He meets his mates, goes drinking and goes clubbing and lets a guy with looks he’d normally walk away from dance next to him for a while. It doesn’t make him feel any better. Worse, actually - sort of sick, down in the bottom of his gut. The guy can’t dance, just bounces into tiny movements of his arms and feet, and more than one person sees them and sniggers.

 

Frank probably can’t dance for shit either. But Frank, Aiden reckons, probably just goes for it, does the running man and the lawnmower and big fish, little fish, cardboard box, and laughs at himself along with everyone else and doesn’t even care. He probably has fun.

 

It’s still early when Aiden tells everyone he’s tired, that he’s heading home. The barely-dancing bloke doesn’t protest at all, just blinks and shrugs and moves on hopefully to annoy someone else. Jase calls Aiden weak and old and a pussy, and Aiden shoves him into the club toilets and goes down on him to shut him up, even though Jase is a massive dick in every way but the good one and Aiden had never intended to touch him that way again. It’s nice, though, someone shivering under him, at least whilst it lasts.

 

As Aiden leaves, he tries to figure out how much money he’s wasted on such a crap night.

 

The taxi driver’s radio is playing Rick fucking Astley.

 

\- - -

 

[118 Days Later]

 

Aiden realises he’s been waiting to have something to say, at the moment when something to say does occur to him.

 

**> What’s up Frank? Doing much for Halloween?**

**> Fuck. I didn’t mean that as a joke or anything. Just needed a question to ask.**

**> Starting over: Hi. How’s your Halloween?**

 

_> Hello Aiden. I’m sacrificing a goat at midnight, as it happens. Yourself?_

Aiden re-reads the text a few times. It makes something rippling and warm go up his spine. In his gut, something tight unknots.

 

He’s sitting in his flat, on his sofa, naked from his post-work shower, and now he stretches out, enjoying the feeling of the suede against his skin.

 

**> Supposed to be at a party already. I hate dressing up. **

 

_> Put a sink plunger on your face and go as Bane from Dark Knight Rises. I know you know who I mean. _

 

**> Yeah. That was not a good voice on him. **

 

_> Stop. If we get into criticizing Dark Knight Rises I might have to push back the goat sacrifice. I have a lot to say on that topic. And you need to go out. _

 

Aiden stares at his phone, frowns, types a response, deletes it, types again, pauses, deletes, stares some more.

 

He wants to say ‘nice to hear from you’ but obviously not actually in those words. He could send an emoticon, non-specifically positive, but he’s never done that in texts before and he’s not going to let his standards slip now.

 

At one point he hovers his finger over the _Call_ button, because half an hour or so of arguing Batman trivia could be amusing, and it’s certainly more appealing than Jack’s party. Despite Frank’s ambivalence about his plans, it’s unlikely he’s actually busy tonight. Unless maybe Brewood is the kind of town that has community gatherings or something. He can picture Frank in a church hall, helping hand out sandwiches or acting DJ for the kids’ disco. That must have been one crap atmosphere to grow up gay in. Except, Frank’s the one with straight friends, isn’t he? Of the two of them, Frank’s the one who’s apparently out and proud and accepted in his home town.

 

And Frank might screen his call, if he’s busy. Or maybe even if he isn’t. Like, maybe fair enough. But Aiden finds himself not wanting to actually know if that’s what would happen.

 

And then it’s too late to answer in the thread of the conversation, too late to answer without it looking like he worried over what to say, and besides, he ought to get to the stupid party so he can leave it again.

 

Aiden compromises on his outfit with a cheap biker jacket from the market with _Hells Angels_ stenciled blurrily on the back, a gift from an ex who’d liked him in it, and a devil horns headband that he can conveniently lose at the soonest possible occasion, hopefully before some twat takes a photo.

 

The party does turn out to include a gorgeous lad who is either already a Calvin Klein underwear model or destined for that path. All eyes follow Aiden as he goes to chat him up and gets a soft, sultry smile in reply. Aiden takes him home and fucks him over the arm of his sofa, pushing and pushing, over and over, stroke after stroke, until he can get his mind to go blank.

 

\- - -

 

[119 Days Later]

 

**> How was yesterday’s goat sacrifice?**

 

_> Routine. You’ve seen one entrail, you’ve seen them all. Your party?_

 

Aiden looks at the guy in bed next to him. His pretty hair and his gorgeous, chisel-cut stubbly jaw and his six pack and all his manscaping.

 

**> Yeah. Routine. **

 

\- - -

 

[151 Days Later]

 

Getting a Healthcare Assistant job had been one of the recommendations Aiden had had for a pathway into Nursing, and his existing qualifications have been enough to get him attached to an agency where he can accept random shifts to cover absences. Although he’s doing much the same at as at the care home – toast, shit and piss, bed making, feeding, talking down angry demented people – there’s so much more interesting stuff going on at most of the wards he’s sent to. He gets to assist in a cardiac arrest in his second week, and chaperones a lumbar puncture one night when no one else is free.

 

He can only accept shifts that don’t interfere with what he’s already assigned at the care home, but it is more money as well as good experience. Two jobs means less time to himself, but even when he gets a free day he doesn’t seem able to relax anyway. A couple of guys call him for phone sex, and sometimes he goes with it and sometimes he’s too tired to bother. 

 

The nights are drawing in now and it’s dark by four in the afternoon. He gets home most evenings just to collapse, to sleep, to stop thinking.


	3. Winter

\- - -

WINTER

\- - -

 

[174 Days Later]

 

_> Merry Christmas!_

 

Might be a group text, Aiden reasons. First he’s heard from Frank since immediately after Halloween, so no reason at all to think that this message was directed at him in particular.

 

Only polite to respond, though. Spirit of the season and all that. And it’s something to look at that isn’t the second run through of _Frozen_ , which all five girls are parked in front of, even Rachel, although she’s ostentatiously on her phone too. They’re all at Auntie Beth’s house – she’s between treatments and seemingly feeling about as well as she has since it all started, and hosting Christmas seems to make her happy. Not that Aiden’s Mum isn’t there in the kitchen too, insisting on helping out. Aiden offered them his services, but they both told him he looked worn out and to sit down for a while.

 

**> Merry Christmas! You with family?**

It takes a good quarter of an hour – and an entire musical number – for a reply to appear, which means the group text guess was probably right.

 

_> My sister is doing something unspeakable to a turkey and her children are trying to smear sugar on all my furniture. Hooray family Christmas._

 

**> My sister is hitting me with a magic wand until I become a magical pony to go with her princess dress. Don’t knock ones that can cook. **

 

_> Is she much younger or am I about to discover something terrifying about your age?_

 

**> I’m 24. You?**

 

_> 30 tomorrow_

 

**> Your birthday is on Boxing Day?**

 

_> Me and 19,178,802 others_

_> That’s 1/365th of 7 billion, in case you’re wondering_

_> And I imagine it’s shit for us all_

**> Hope you have a good day today, then**

“Now girls,” says a voice, and Aiden twists to see Auntie Beth coming into the room, still in her apron, arms folded. She’s wearing earrings in the shape of Christmas stockings. “How about changing to something Aiden and Rachel want to watch too, so they’ll look up from their phones for half a second?”

 

It’s aimed at Rachel primarily, Aiden knows, but he slides his mobile away sheepishly all the same.

 

“Sorry, Auntie Beth.”

 

She comes over to him, smiling. “Phones on Christmas are only for family. And we’re all here today, or will be when your Grandad finally arrives. I told him he didn’t have to make a pudding, but I will admit I’ve been looking forward to his trifle. Half a bottle of sherry, he puts in it.”

 

In his pocket, Aiden’s phone vibrates. “I’ll just see what the reply was, just this,” he apologises, and takes a quick look.

_> Thanks. You too._

When he looks up again, Auntie Beth is still smiling at him. “Someone you’d like to be family, maybe?” she asks, and then turns away, back to the kitchen. “Don’t mind me,” she calls back, “I’m only teasing you.”

 

\- - -

 

[175 Days Later]

 

**> Happy Birthday!**

 

_> Thank you_

 

**> So, was it shit?**

 

_> This morning I found that my cat – HE who I called Sirius Black – had a litter of kittens in the barn. So not that shit. But I need a new name for the deceiving little monster _

 

**> Kind of has to be Minerva McGonagall, right?**

 

_> I’m not sure he deserves to be named after anyone that awesome_

 

“What are you smiling at, Aiden?” his Mum asks, coming over with a cup of tea and plate of turkey sandwiches.

 

“Aiden has a girl-friend!” Natalia sing-songs, twirling so her Princess Elsa dress spins out.

 

“I’m just smiling at fuc – at kittens, OK? Look.”

 

Frank’s sent a photo of five tiny balls of fluff nestled against their mother, tucked into a bed of straw. The girls love it and make him forward it to their phones too, and Auntie Beth smiles and says it’s sweet, and gives his shoulder a squeeze.

 

His Mum nods at the picture, but she gives him a long look that he’s not quite sure how to interpret.

 

\- - -

 

[181 Days Later]

 

**> happy new year frank i’m sorry i was mmean bout yr face yr ears ar fun nice mouth**

 

**> To everyone in my phone book I sent drunk texts to at midnight, I’m sorry. Last time I mix tequila with whatever that green shit is.**

**> Frank? I’m sorry. **

**> I was really drunk. **

**> I sent out a bunch of bollocks to a load of people**

**> I’m sorry**

**> Frank?**

 

\- - -

 

[209 Days Later]

 

“What crawled into your bed and died?” Charles asks, halfway through his soup. Carrot and coriander today, with ‘Thick and Easy Food Thickening Agent’ mixed in to produce an unappetizing jelly. Charles has been having swallowing problems for some weeks now, and isn’t allowed normal fluids any more. He won’t say he minds, but it’s left him depressed and irritable, and Aiden can’t think of anything to say that’ll make it better.

 

“Sorry, what?” Aiden runs a hand over his face, replays the question. “Yeah. Sorry. Been a long week. You know. New Year. January blues.”

 

“Which means the problem isn’t what’s in your bed but what’s not in it.” Charles casts his spoon away with an expression of disgust. “Would you please make me some more toast instead of this muck?”

 

Aiden gets up and walks to the kitchen area. “What makes you say that, Charles? About me?”

 

“Think I went through twenty years in the Royal Air Force and wound up unable to spot that look on a man’s face?”

 

Standing by the toaster – he needs to make this second slice fast – Aiden looks back at him and frowns. Sometimes, now, he thinks Charles has started to repeat himself, lose track just a little. Apparently he had a CT scan over the swallowing, no signs of a stroke, but according to what Aiden’s been reading in the nursing handbook he got from the library, things can get past even the best imaging.

 

“I’m fine, Charles,” he says, coming back with the toast. “Now look, I’ve buttered this for you, I know you like to do it yourself but I’m already running late, I’m sorry.”

 

“What are you saving time for?” Charles asks him. “What for, if you’re not going to use it to make yourself happier?”

 

“Tablets now,” Aiden tells him, pressing them out of their foil.

 

\- - -

 

[215 Days Later]

 

“…and it’s, like, well known for stag parties, which means most of the time it’s blokes already blind drunk and they just throw fivers at you, so it’s fine, Mum, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, really. Well sometimes, yeah, but it’s OK, they’ve got bouncers and that.”

 

The woman on the bus in front of Aiden is checking her nails whilst she speaks, and rightly because her nails are quite something, purple and pink and diamante gems, and tiny Louis Vuitton logos, which is why Aiden’s idly paying attention to her, letting her phone conversation wash past him.

 

“Well, from all over,” the woman continues. “Manchester’s, like, the centre for it for miles round. Because they don’t want to see people they know, is why, like the bride’s family or whatever. Well, yeah, from Leeds and Stoke and places. Like, apparently tonight there’s a stag party from fucking Brewood?”

 

Aiden worries she might have heard his intake of breath and be put off, or think he’s some kind of creep, but she’s well into her conversation and keeps going regardless.

 

“I know! I couldn’t believe it either. Looked it up on Facebook, and he’s going, of course. Good thing I’m not there because I would not dance for Ashton, no way, like, that would be so wrong. Might text him though and freak him out. Like, ‘I know you’re at Exclusive Lounge tonight, what’s that about?’ or something. No, don’t tell Auntie Dora, that’s not fair…”

 

Aiden gets off at his stop and makes his way to his flat thinking of all the reasons he’s clearly not going to doing anything stupid. Because it would be stupid. It would be absolutely fucking idiotic. True, when he looked it up he found that Brewood wasn’t the largest place ever, but that doesn’t mean every resident goes on every bloody stag do.

 

And even if they did, doing anything about it would still be stupid.

 

Why the hell would he even want to do it that way? If he actually wanted to see Frank, he could just… for fuck’s sake, he doesn’t _want_ to see Frank, why would he? Feeling bad about upsetting someone just makes you a decent person, not in any way involved with them.

 

Although how decent can you be, if you upset them in the first place?

 

Back at his flat, two seconds of irritably prodding at his phone informs him that ‘Exclusive Lounge’ is, as he’d thought, a pole dancing club, and with a horrendously tacky website. Its address is in the city centre, on a street he knows – he’s passed it before, actually, automatically blanking the name along with the photos of the girls.

 

He puts his phone aside and goes to shower. When he gets out there’s two messages waiting for him from Grindr – Reggie, 26, top, asking him if he’s out in town tonight.

 

Well, fuck knows he needs a shag…

 

Thing is, though, when Aiden does meet him, Reggie’s dull as shit, despite already being off his face on something, and Aiden tells him to look elsewhere, leaves him sitting in a booth at a pretentious new cocktail place he’s not planning to visit again.

 

He doesn’t have a plan, after that, but a little while later he finds himself standing outside Exclusive Lounge.

 

It’s kind of hideous from the outside. When he goes in, the carpet in the foyer is worn and slightly sticky; the whole place is like that, grubby over shiny, like it was brought out really nice once and no one’s bothered to fix it up in the years since. The music blaring from the actual lounge area is bad rock seguing jarringly to bubblegum pop, and the air is heavy with air-freshener over the salt of sweat and other sour fluids.

 

There are several groups of men dotted at tables around the room, clustered mostly at the edges of the main stage, which has a walkway leading out into the middle of the room. The room is only dimly lit, though, and it’s hard to see much detail beyond what is picked out by the stage-mounted spotlights.

 

“What will you be drinking tonight, sir?” a voice says, and Aiden turns to find a woman in a tight silver bikini and high-top black stockings waiting with her order pad in hand.

 

“Jack Daniels, thanks.” If he leaves at once he’ll just look like a pillock, or a policeman. He takes at seat in the remotest corner booth and squints again into the darkness.

 

There’s a show of swinging spotlights as the current act on stage ends, beams raking over the room, and that’s when Aiden sees him.

 

Central table, right in the thick of it, about fifteen lads, mostly thick-set, and Frank, blond head, funny ears, nose, gangly, sipping something orange through a fucking straw in the middle of them.

 

Frank’s laughing, smiling. The guy next to him is leant in towards him, not even paying attention to the girl onstage, and they’re talking and Frank’s smiling and making him laugh. The guy’s dark-haired and has a thick beard. Maybe that’s Frank’s type. Wanker Kevan had a beard, after all, and Frank basically paid sixty quid for him.

 

“Your drink, sir.” Silver bikini is back, smiling at him. “We’re in the main show at the moment, but would you be wanting to order a private dance later at all?”

 

“Nah, thanks, I’m good.” He holds up his drink. “Cheers.”

 

Beard guy next to Frank is making a joke now, pretending to feel up Frank’s chest, twisting his nipple and making Frank wince and pull away and bat at him, but with a teasing lightness that says he’s not really pissed.

 

Aiden realises he’s gripping the fake leather seats so hard he’s leaving marks. And fuck knows what’s been soaked into this upholstery over the years.

 

Swigging back his drink, Aiden sees that the problem, clearly, is that he didn’t just fuck Frank that night. He should have done. That night or the next day, dragged him to a hotel for an hour – Frank would have gone, Frank would have followed him fucking anywhere that day. That would have got this out of his system and he wouldn’t be sitting here like this now, like a fucking twat.

 

He’s never actually wondered before what Frank told his mates about that day. Like, if he went over now would they all bristle and defend Frank’s honour and demand retribution, or not have the first clue who he was? They clearly don’t mind Frank being queer in theory, but would that change if they had to see it for themselves? If he went over and pulled Frank into a snog now, what would they do?

 

Aiden takes a final gulp of his whisky and rests for a moment with his hands braced on the table in front of him, head bowed. Coming here was a mistake and he ought to leave, now, and if that means the people at the door think he’s weird or scared or gay, then they’re more than partway right and screw what they think anyhow.

 

Having stood up to go, his attention is briefly grabbed by the act just starting up on the stage, which is one of those ones where the woman holds an angle grinder against a plate on her hip to send out sparks.

 

And that’s when he sees Frank looking at him, right square at him, and then down at his phone and then at him again. Frank’s expression is all shock, horrified.

 

Grindr, must be. Proximity alert function. Because Aiden had checked if Frank was on Grindr, and he wasn’t, but that was getting on for six months ago, and people do download new apps sometimes.

 

Like maybe if they were coming back to somewhere where someone had been unkind to them, and they wanted to make sure they avoided seeing them again.

 

Aiden fumbles for his phone, texts swiftly:

 

**> I’m going now right now**

**> I’m sorry**

**> If you want to yell at me I’ll be outside but you don’t have to I’m sorry**

 

He’ll wait fifteen minutes in the street, then go, he thinks.

 

After twenty-one minutes, Frank appears, looking flushed and flustered.

 

“Well this should be an interesting story,” Frank says, walking over and folding his arms, frowning. He’s taller than Aiden remembered, and his hair lighter. His ears are asymmetrical but it sort of suits him. His mouth is much nicer when he smiles, but he’s not smiling now.

 

“Yeah, well, see, I was on the bus,” Aiden explains, and tells him about the woman mentioning Brewood, the coincidence of it. “And my plans for the evening went tits up. So to speak. So I came here.”

 

“What for?” Frank snaps.

 

“To see you.”

 

“Why?”

 

Aiden kicks an empty bottle into the gutter. He’s got his hands in his jacket pockets against the cold and he shrugs his shoulders, knowing his reasons are all varying degrees of pathetic. “You didn’t text back at New Year’s.”

 

“What?” Frank gapes, looks around him like there’ll be a better explanation he can spot somewhere. “I missed the part where I owed you any kind of communication.”

 

Aiden shrugs again, helpless.

 

“Whatever,” Frank says, and then starts walking away. Aiden should leave too, just get away. No one saw this happening, no one but the two of them would ever know.

 

“How are the kittens?” Aiden asks.

 

Slowly, Frank turns round, his eyebrows raised like he can’t even believe what he’s hearing. Aiden ducks his head in acknowledgement of the lameness of the question, then makes himself meet Frank’s eye again. “I am genuinely asking.”

 

“OK.” Frank lets out a sigh. “Here, look.” He gets his phone out of his trouser pocket, scrolls up a photograph; five little balls that have become five distinct miniature cats, three orange and two black. “Going to have to start advertising for homes soon.”

 

“My sisters are begging for a cat. My Mum said they could have one if they could be sure it wasn’t from a kitten farm. I did think of these.” Aiden hands the phone back. True, he’d never in a million years thought of acting on the idea, but he did think it.

 

“Seriously? Kitten trading?” Frank gestures around them. “We’re standing in a crummy alley at night, kitten trading? I feel like you’re about to reveal what that’s actually a secret code for, like the white rabbit in _The Matrix_ or something. Tell it to me straight, Aiden: is the entire world a computer simulation? Does this mean I have to watch a lot of things happen in bullet time? I look crap in black leather, just so you know. But that’ll not surprise you.” His tone is light, teasing enough, but there’s something darker there at the end, something Aiden can’t hold his gaze under.

 

Aiden lets the moment hang again for a while. It’s not like he has any good answers. “You having a good night?” he asks, after the pause, gesturing towards the club. “Rugby lads, is it?”

 

“Why are you here, Aiden?” Frank doesn’t look cross any more, just sort of anxious.

 

“You told me you’d lost your phone on the bus, that time in July.”

 

“So?”

 

“So can I get a pass on being weird too, just this once? I’m not… I’m having a bit of a strange year and I didn’t meant to upset you or spoil your night or… Look, I’ll go. I’m sorry. Really.” He turns and starts walking down the street.

 

“Hey!” Frank calls after him, with half the street between them. “If you still want a kitten in a month’s time, let me know. Not like I can afford to turn offers down.”

 

Aiden turns round, hesitates for a moment. But there’s still nothing he can say, so he just waves in acknowledgement, gives the thumbs up and keeps going.

 

\- - -

 

[234 Days Later]

 

Frank’s profile didn’t stay up on Grindr long, but Aiden found it before it went, and remembers the photo clearly: Frank in green wellies and a waxed jacket, grinning widely, in the rain, a field of sheep over his shoulder, mud under his feet. Not a good picture by Grindr standards, but might just have been successful for sheer novelty value – selfies of ripped torsos do start to blend together after a while.

 

Either way, the brevity of Frank’s Grindr adventure backs up Aiden’s theory that he’d only gone on it to be sure of avoiding him whilst back in Manchester. And if he actually did go on it to find someone, him being gone from it would suggest he’s in a relationship now. Maybe with Mr Beard from Brewood.

 

Aiden reckons he should have asked about that when they met. Mentioned Mr Beard, said he hoped Frank was happy with him. That could have made things… clearer.

 

He’s agonized over the meeting more than once. It was a godawful, fucking stupid thing to do. And what can it have looked like to Frank? And what if someone had seen him? Him, wandering out of a straight men’s tacky club, pursued by a guy with weird ears who wasn’t smiling at all.

 

“Are we fucking or what?” the guy he’s with – Simon? - asks him.

 

“Sorry,” Aiden says, and gets back to it, to getting it in, to giving a good time.

 

It’s good, properly good, Simon’s a lush bottom, and Aiden closes his eyes with pleasure, but all that leaves him seeing is wellington boots and mud and sheep.

 

\- - -

 

[262 Days Later]

 

**> How about that kitten then? Still available?**

 

_> Sure. I can’t post it though, it’d eat the stamp. _

 

**> I could pick it up? I’m going back to Wales for Easter. Meet somewhere on the way? **

_> Like where?_

**> Wolverhampton? I’m on the train.**

 

_> OK. Well, take your pick. The black one on the far left is already gone but the others all up for grabs._

 

A photo is attached, the five kittens even bigger now, all seemingly captivated by a ball on a string, which is being held by a third person so the photo can be taken.

 

Mr Beardy Boyfriend, perhaps?

**> I’d ask you to tell me the genders, but your record on that isn’t great. How is the feline formerly known as Sirius?**

 

_> Serena is now following her heartsong and owning her identity, thank you_

 

“What’s up with you?” Jase asks, annoyed. “Are you going to giggle at your phone all night or do some fucking dancing? That guy by the pillar – no, that one, the young Jude Law-ish one – he’s checking you out if you bothered looking up.”

 

\- - -

 

[268 Days Later]

 

It’s raining in Wolverhampton and, having found the coffee shop where they’re supposed to meet, Aiden ducks gratefully into it and orders a large latte, and a biscuit on the side because it’s cold and he’s still got hours on the train to put up with after this.  

 

He seats himself by the window, and right on time Frank comes in view along the road, plastic cat carrier in one hand. He’s drawn his coat collar up against the rain, and when he gets into the shop and joins Aiden at the table, his nose and cheekbones and the tips of those big ears are pink with chill.

 

“Alright?” Aiden starts to get up. “You sit down, I’ll get you something – what do you fancy?”

 

“Large cappuccino, thanks.” Frank is grinning at him, friendly enough. Aiden hadn’t realised until the relief hits him now how much he suspected Frank might stand him up. Others would have, all things considered.

 

“Cake? Biscuit? I indulged.”

 

“No, cheers, I had a big lunch.”

 

It’s such an unremarkable, ordinary little conversation but as Aiden queues again at the counter he’s feeling this glow of achievement, like he succeeded at something.

 

It occurs to him as he’s waiting that here, out of the rarefied atmosphere of central Manchester, no one is likely to assume they’re a couple. Few people will look at them and think Aiden’s slumming it or Frank has forked out for a bit of rent. They’ll just see, what? Mates, probably. Or, given the kitten, maybe something less than that – perhaps two people who coincidentally connected on Gumtree to make a sale.

 

Aiden darts a quick look at Frank, who’s put the cat carrier on the table and is apparently talking to the kitten within as he fiddles about with a water bottle and a bowl. As Aiden watches, the bowl goes into the cage and the door closes again in one quick movement, over before he’s even had time to worry that the cat will squirm free.

 

_And now you want me to, what? Say you’re beautiful? Because you’re right, you’re not._

 

Those were his parting words, back in that wine bar, the last time they sat across a table from each other. Aiden had thought he was being truthful, then, and that that was how he ought to be.

 

In a way, he supposes now, he was truthful. Truthful about himself, about the sort of person he was. He’d shown Frank that being handsome and self-confident didn’t make you anybody’s answer or some sort of bloody Prince Charming – quite the opposite, really.

 

A few weeks ago, Mandy’s baby photos went up on Facebook. Aiden left some congratulatory but brief comments, and she’d answered: _Thank you_. Only, precisely that, no additions or emoticons. But it was something.

 

He’d thought hiding from the rough edges of himself might work forever. He’d thought it actually worked at all.  

 

The coffees come and Aiden takes them back to the table. “Here we are,” he says. “That’s her then?”

 

Frank pats the cage. “Yes, last to leave. I am keeping one – you need generations of cats, on a farm.”

 

“Does this one have a name yet?”

 

“Jaffa, but you can change it if you like. I named all the red tabbies after types of orange.”

 

Aiden laughs “And the black ones?”

 

“Berry and Plum. I was feeling the fruit theme then.”

 

“So it seems.” Aiden smiles, and takes a breath. “How are you?”

 

“Not bad.”

 

Frank still looks friendly enough, but it’s not exactly the level of detail Aiden wanted. If Frank’s OK now, then that’s fine. They can all be fine. Aiden just needs to know that.

 

“Thanks for coming today,” he says. “I hope it wasn’t out of your way.”

 

Frank shrugs. “There’s shopping I’ve been meaning to do here anyway, out in the big city. Like battling my way through Primark for more shirts, the joys. And I keep meaning to replace my kettle. Isn’t being an adult great?”

 

Aiden laughs.

 

“So,” Frank continues, “You on your way to Port Talbot, then?”

 

“Yeah. Seeing my Mum and stuff, for Easter. The girls are going to be so happy with the cat.”

 

“Is this the sisters and cousins in acute need of jokes a while ago? Are they OK now?”

 

Aiden blinks. He wasn’t expecting that to have been remembered. He takes another sip of his coffee. “Mostly OK. As good as can be expected, I suppose. Thing is, my Aunt’s been having cancer treatment. Her girls have been staying at my Mum’s a lot and there’s not a lot of fun for them. They’ll love having the kitten, though.”

 

Frank’s frowning. He looks like what he’s feeling is sympathy rather than a wincing regret that he’d ever asked in the first place, and Aiden knows how that looks goes because he’s seen it on the two other people – his supervisor and Jack – that he’s told.

 

“Oh I see,” Frank’s saying. “I’m sorry. That must be a lot of work for your Mum.”

 

“Yeah, but she does it. She’s amazing, really. I can’t get down as often as I’d like to help out – my Dad died a while back and she’s shouldering a lot.”

 

There’s a pause between them – Frank is looking awkward now, and Aiden’s just about to deflect the whole mood with a joke and change the subject, when Frank speaks again.

 

“Excuse me if I’m telling you old news, but does your Mum know about the help she - or your Aunt - can get? Macmillan Cancer Support can link you up to some grants and things, one-off money, and there’s benefits out there if you can jump through the hoops to get to them – they can help with that too. I mean, I don’t know if it’d be the same for your case, but they’re good, I think.”

 

It’s on the tip of Aiden’s tongue to ask where Frank’s experience comes from, but the man’s tense, biting his lip, and Aiden backs off, just nods and types a note into his phone, gives him a chance to compose himself again.

 

“Good,” Frank says, suddenly brisk. “Well, I ought to get going and let you get on.”

 

Aiden blinks. “You don’t want another coffee? On me again, since you’ll not take anything for the cat.”

 

“No, thank you. I’m supposed to meet someone, so…” Frank’s getting his coat back on, wincing as some of the rain that hasn’t had a chance to dry runs down his neck. “Anyway, I think the last thing I need right now is more caffeine. Jaffa’s got her records and paperwork stuff in the side pocket of the cage if you need them. Well, good bye.”

 

And Aiden is left sitting alone.

 

Frank walks away down the road, making a good pace until, half way down, a man comes up to his side, gets a hug and kisses him quickly. It’s not Mr Beard that Aiden can tell, but then he might have shaved.

 

But clearly Frank does have someone, and that, Aiden thinks firmly, is a good thing.  

 

\- - -

 

[270 Days Later]

 

“Don’t you want to play with Jaffa too?” Aiden sits down on the stairs next to Rachel, who’s curled over her phone, having walked through the front door and come up to sit here without speaking to anyone.

 

Auntie Beth is in hospital again, an infection after her chemo, nothing too acutely serious by all accounts but not good either. Aiden’s been trying to stay completely positive, in his head and in all he says, but the setback has a knot of worry twisting in his chest.  It also means Beth’s daughters are back in Aiden’s Mum’s house, and Aiden’s Mum has to be out working late tonight, even though it’s a Bank Holiday.

 

“Hey? You OK?” Aiden gives Rachel a nudge. “I know it’s not easy, with your Mum, but…”

 

She looks up at him, her eyes red. She’s wearing mascara – when did she start doing that? – and it has run down her cheeks.

 

“You wouldn’t understand,” she tells him. “It’s a girl thing.”

 

That does make him blink, and assume some issue with periods or the pill or… other things girls might have that he’s never even heard of.

 

But later, whilst heating up some dinner for his Mum after her shift, he mentions what Rachel had said, and she sighs heavily and looks properly worried.

 

“It’s some of the girls at her school,” his Mum says, kicking her shoes off and taking a long drink of orange squash. “It’s all on Twitter or something, or one of those photo sending things. I got it out of Felicia’s mother. They were all sharing one of those viral hit things - celebrities that look like animals or something. And then some little twat says Rachel looks like a pug dog. Well she’s got that nose, bless her, but never thought of it before. And now they’re all sending each other these dog pictures and God knows what, and you can imagine, she’s mortified. I tell her it’ll move on and not to pay attention, but at that age it’s hard to let things roll off. God. Kids can be such vicious little bitches.”

 

Aiden’s standing still, gripping the counter edge, the microwaved macaroni cheese steaming in front of him. Mechanically he gets a fork from the drawer for her. His heart’s pounding again.  

 

He can’t sleep that night. Gets up, in the end, and quietly lets himself out of the front door, goes walking round the block at 2am, waiting for the spinning mess in his head to go away.

 

The next day he sends a text with a photo attached:

 

**> Thanks again for Jaffa. The girls love her. **

 

Natalia, Shelley, Amy and Andrea are in the picture, clustered happily round their kitten. Rachel wouldn’t let him photograph her.

 

Aiden’s sick of starting at the ceiling at night, hearing himself think, seeing himself too clearly.


	4. Spring

 

\- - -

SPRING

\- - -

 

[275 Days Later]

 

Aiden turns up to work on Tuesday to hear that Charles had a fall over the Easter weekend. No serious injuries, but he’s still in hospital now, getting intravenous antibiotics for another catheter infection. The reality is that any reduction in Aiden’s lunch feeding schedule is sorely needed, but he nips into Charles’ rooms anyway to water his plants.

 

Photos of Jaffa the kitten have gone down a storm with the other residents – it’s been a significant leverage for those he usually has to cajole to get eating. Charles would have a few choice words about being shown pictures of animals, though, Aiden suspects, and he grins at the thought, and then sighs.

 

 _Good person stuff_ – that was what Frank had called Aiden’s job. But that’s no way of looking at it, not really. If being a care assistant is good, is being a nurse yet more good because you’re more expert in your help, or less good because you empty fewer bedpans? Doctors get a lot of credit, but they barely touch patients as far as Aiden can see. If everyone in the care sector was so nice, so helpful, so good, they’d all empty bedpans and catheter bags sunset to sunrise, because fuck knows there’s enough of them to occupy everybody all day long. And all of them are paid – what about Aiden’s Mum, who cares for her sister from nothing but love?

 

 _Don’t get old alone_ \- Frank had said that too. Is that all love boils down to in the end, to someone who might clean up after you and mix your Thick and Easy into your soup?

 

And if it has any power, is it only to hurt and disappoint, like what Aiden’s Mum has been through?

 

Aiden walked away from Frank because he’d thought Frank was ugly, but sometimes now, in the sleepless nights, he wonders if he ran from Frank so fast because his lack of obvious looks made it so obvious that there had to be a deeper reason Aiden felt such a weird pull to stay close to him.

 

On a shelf with some of Charles’ pot plants is his wedding photo, crisp black and white in a silver frame, a young Charles in a morning suit and a bride in a simple white dress in a severe 1940s cut. Aiden looks at the two of them, arm in arm, all their future ahead of them.

 

Even if she had turned Charles down flat, on that platform all those years ago, what would it matter to Charles now anyway? Could anyone regret having taken a chance?

 

\- - -

 

[280 Days Later]

 

“He’s called Josh,” Dean explains. “He asked to meet up and he was standing there in Twist with big, sad eyes so I thought I’d buy him a drink. Freddie shagged him once, you know. I think he messaged me because he thought I might know where Freddie had gone.”

 

“That’s nice of you to take time with him,” Aiden says, slowly. He doesn’t remember Dean being as thoughtful as this. But then the boy’s nineteen, and that’s an age when you can still change.

 

After all, when Aiden was nineteen, he was still in Port Talbot, pretending, even maybe to himself, that he could make it work with Mandy, and secretly seeing Ben, who he’d thought he might fall for forever, at least until he’d realised how many other guys Ben was seeing as well as him. “You’re pretty, Aiden,” Ben had said when they broke up, looking bored “but not that pretty.”

 

Fuck, it’s been a long time since he’s thought about that one.

 

“I mean,” Dean is saying, “Freddie treated him like crap, which, whatever, it’s Freddie. No offence.” He puts his hand on Aiden’s arm.

 

Aiden shrugs. “No argument here.”

 

“I’m just trying to find a way to convince Josh he shouldn’t hold a torch. I mean, Freddie’s literally vanished, like, thin air, it’s not very realistic.”

 

“Vanished? I thought he had it pretty sweet here, with the house and Henry and everything?”

 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Who knows how that boy’s mind works? Ah, you’re back!”

 

A tall, skinny, red-haired lad with wide, dark, rabbit eyes is coming over, carrying two drinks.   


Aiden frowns. “Thought you said you were buying the drinks, Dean?”

 

“Well I did offer.” Dean grins. “Aiden, Josh. Josh, this is Aiden. Freddie left him too.”

 

Which is not the most accurate interpretation of events ever, but Aiden doesn’t care. Josh looks nervous, and bites at his lip, but smiles when Dean starts talking to him, and maybe that’ll go somewhere, do some good all round.

 

“Alright?” Aiden asks by way of greeting. Josh blushes and holds out his hand, then winces and starts to pull it back. Aiden takes pity on him and reaches out to give him a handshake.

 

“Freddie left you?” Josh asks, apparently impressed. “Fuck.”

 

“Yeah, well, we kind of drifted apart,” Aiden bites out, trying not to let himself get pissed off. “There’s more to making something work than a nice arse and pretty lips.” He slaps Josh’s arse playfully as he speaks, just to bring that blush back and because, OK, he’s maybe a little pissed off.

 

“What? Aiden?” The voice rings out from somewhere behind him. “I thought you had a no-gingers rule?”

 

Aiden turns and sees them, Jack, Dave and Jase, ambling over, laughing loudly.

 

“He’s not with me!” Aiden hears himself protesting, gritting his teeth too late to stop the words. Heat rushing through him, he turns to glance at Josh, who’s looking at his feet now, glum as a kicked puppy. “Hey, I didn’t mean…”

 

He did, though. His friends – some of whom he barely even likes – came over to judge him and he hurt someone on reflex. Fuck.

 

“How about coming for a dance?” Dean asks Josh, taking his hand. Dean seems calm, not surprised or bothered by Aiden’s outburst. Like this is normal. Like he expected nothing else.

 

Josh and Dean move away, and Aiden faces the others.

 

He folds his arms. “Well lads, that was nice.”

 

“No, it was ginger and clearly clingy as a clam,” Jack says, and laughs.

 

“Come on, Aiden. What kind of mood are you in, man?” Jase reaches out, gives him a light shove. Aiden raises his hands instinctively, then breathes deeply and backs away.

 

“Leave it, guys, alright?” He keeps moving, takes himself away to the bar. He needs a drink, a strong one. He can hear them behind him, laughing still.

 

He used to be used to being laughed at. When he’d been nineteen, he’d been the weird kid, the probably-queer one, for most of his life. He’d known he was the victim, and that he deserved more.

 

Getting to the Manchester scene, realising that his looks bought him entry to the highest tiers of gay social life, that had only felt like his due, like the universe finally giving him a break. Life had changed, but he’s never realised how much till now.

 

Aiden necks a shot, asks for another.

 

When had he let himself become one of the people making the weird kids feel shit?

 

\- - -

 

[293 Days Later]

 

_> Hey everyone. I’m running in the Race for Life this summer in support of Cancer Research UK. Please check out my sponsorship page at JustGiving. _

 

**> Cool, Frank. Good luck. **

 

_> Thanks! _

 

\- - -

 

[294 Days Later]

 

Aiden wakes sharply from a dream. He’s hard, hot, sweating.

 

He puts his hand against his groin, and hisses through his teeth. He’s fully erect, straining, desperate, getting his boxers damp.

 

He can remember exactly what, exactly _who_ he was dreaming about, and he’s still drowsy with it, cock drooling for it, and he doesn’t bother to try and make himself picture anyone else as he strokes himself to relief.

 

\- - -

 

[299 Days Later]

 

“Anyway, how are you, Aiden? I’ve been talking about me all this time, I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright, Mum, you’ve got a lot to be dealing with.” Aiden’s sitting on his sofa, tired after a day spent tidying his flat. He’s found four random, un-matched socks that aren’t his own and some keys he thought had been stolen and the DVD case for _Valentine’s Day._

 

She tuts at him. “And you don’t have lot on your plate? I know the hours you’re working. I know how much you’re having to do, I’ve seen the skin on your hands – you need to moisturise them more, or let me buy you some washing up gloves, I don’t care how they make you look.”

 

“I’m alright, Mum, I’ve told you.”

 

He hears her sighing. Look, I know it can’t be easy for you, hearing about Rachel’s troubles at school. It wasn’t an easy time for you either, was it?”

 

“What?” He sits up, pulse starting to race. “What’s brought this on? I was fine. You never thought I wasn’t fine.”

 

There’s a pause before she speaks. He can feel the care with which she’s forming her words. “Look, Aiden, is anyone looking after you? I want that for you, you know that, don’t you? I want to know someone’s there, and I don’t… I don’t mind who that person is, you understand? I just want you looked after. Cared for.”

 

Aiden tries to clear the lump forming in his throat without being obvious.

 

“Thanks, Mum,” he says, quietly.

 

\- - -

 

[317 Days Later]

 

It’s Aiden’s second date with Kyle, after they met in the queue for the dry cleaners. Kyle’s a couple of years older than him, a council worker, seemingly a decent bloke, and far from unattractive, but none of that changes the increasingly awkward silences between them. Aiden thought he ought to try something even vaguely serious, but it’s been pretty shit.

 

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not feeling this,” Kyle says now, to Aiden’s relief, pushing back his plate, knife and fork neatly crossed on it. He’s left his pizza crusts, which is something Aiden’s always found weirdly annoying.

 

Aiden shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah. I think you’re right. I mean, you’re nice and all, but it’s not working, is it?”

 

“You should get in touch about that work placement in the social care department, though, if you still want it.” Kyle calls the waiter over, gets their bill. “I’m happy to help.”

 

Aiden thanks him, and when he sees Kyle making a move to walk one down the street, goes off in the other, even though it’s not where he needs to be to go home.

 

There’s a 24-hr Turkish fast food place, he remembers, down by where he is, mostly used by cab drivers. Freddie had been the one who discovered it, and he took Aiden and half the collective there on a couple of occasions last year, arguing they had the best kebabs in the city.

 

He and Kyle had skipped pudding, and now Aiden orders one of the sticky sugar cakes and a coffee, and takes them to a corner table. He sits there eating slowly, and watching the world pass by on the other side of the glass.

 

Then the door opens, and two men, shambling in the way of the fairly intoxicated, enter the restaurant.

 

Aiden blinks at them.

 

It’s Henry. And Frank. Henry and Frank, side-by-side, laughing at something.

 

“…I mean, he just wanted someone to cook for him, basically,” Frank’s saying. “I said to him, ‘Why are we even together? Why did you ask me out?’ and he said, he actually said, ‘Well I don’t think you’ll leave me.’ Like, be still my beating heart!”

 

“Oh God, I know!” Henry answers, through his laughter. “The last man I met up with asked me if I owned my house, practically before I’d got out of the door! I don’t… Oh, Aiden! It is Aiden, isn’t it? Hello!”

 

And Aiden watches Frank turn, sees the look of horror come into his face, like Aiden’s the last person on Earth he wanted to see.

 

Aiden makes himself smile anyway. “Hi Henry. Frank.”

 

Henry wanders over the short distance to where Aiden’s still sitting. “Oh? Do you two know each other?”

 

“It’s a small world,” Aiden offers, and keeps his gaze on Henry, so Frank can at least compose himself and they can get through this. “And how did you meet?”

 

“Dating website,” Henry says, with a little self-conscious eye-roll. “A bit old school, I know, but it is nice to learn more about someone than two lines of Grindr profile.”

 

“Ah. I see,” Aiden takes a drink of water and blinks. “Well, that’s nice I suppose. Was on a date myself tonight. Didn’t work out, though.”

 

“Well, to be honest,” Henry whispers, leaning in after glancing behind himself – Frank’s at the counter, ordering – “I got a bit of a shock. I mean, I don’t know what he did to his photo, but…”

 

“And Frank! How are you?” Aiden says loudly, getting up from his seat and going over to the counter. “Can I carry anything for you?”

 

Frank looks at him, frowning for a moment. Aiden can see him forcing himself to relax. “I’m alright, cheers. We were just going to take this back to Henry’s, actually, so we’ll get a cab or something, so…”

 

“Ah. Yes.” Aiden nods, steps back.

 

“You should come back too!” Henry announces, joining them. He’s bright eyed with inspiration, a look Aiden still remembers all too well. When Henry wants to do something, or doesn’t want to do something and wants to divert from that, he’s more or less an unstoppable force. He will wear you down.

 

“Yeah, come on Aiden!” Henry’s insisting. “Hey, I could text some of the others from the old collective, have a real reunion! I bet they’d come. Wouldn’t that be great? Right, party at mine! All settled! Brilliant.”

 

Frank’s blushing, Aiden can’t help noticing, and looking at his feet. Really, Henry might as well have said he didn’t want Frank over a megaphone, because this is telling Frank, and Aiden, and the whole world just as clearly.

 

“I’d like to come,” Aiden says quietly. “If that’s OK?” He’s directing the question to Frank, but Frank won’t look up at him, and Henry answers anyway, in the loud affirmative.

 

It’s one of the most awkward taxi rides of Aiden’s life, and he can’t help thinking of that one in July, the last time he’d joined Frank on a hook-up. Then, he’d just wanted to keep Frank away, pushed him back bodily at times. Now he wants to reach out in comfort and knows he can’t, that he’s forfeited any right to try.

 

Back at the house – Henry’s house, a place of summer in Aiden’s memory, of being sunshine-drunk and horny, and unhappy in corners he wasn’t letting himself see, souring inside – Henry fetches beer and puts on some music. Aiden recognises the play-list; 80s and early 90s stuff, caught between retro-cool and plain old.

 

 _Don’t leave me this way,_ the Communards plead. I _can’t survive, I can’t stay alive, without your love. Oh don’t you leave me this way._

 

Seated at the kitchen table, the three of them settle to eating, mostly in silence. Aiden catches himself letting out a sigh of relief when the doorbell rings – no doubt some of Henry’s old collective turning up, as promised. Henry disappears to let them in – the girls, by the sounds of the chatter in the hall – and Aiden looks across the kitchen table to Frank, who is pushing lettuce shreds around his plate with a plastic fork.

 

“So, you know Henry then?” Frank asks. “How’s that?”

 

“There was a lad that lived here, when the collective thing was happening – I’m guessing Henry told you about all that? Well, I was, yeah, with him, with Freddie, for a couple of months over the summer.”

 

“Oh. I see.” Frank doesn’t sound angry, just sort of flat. “He’ll be coming back here tonight too then?”

 

“Doubt it.” Aiden sits back in his chair, pushes his plate away. “Last I heard he’d left Manchester altogether.”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

“We’re not in touch,” Aiden explains, and shrugs. “Until today, coming here, I don’t think I’ve barely even thought of him. He was just a pretty face.”

 

“Nobody’s ‘just’ anything,” Frank snaps, and gets up, carrying his plate to the sink. The girls come in, Henry on their heels, and with more voices there’s more of a party atmosphere kicking in. Aiden lets himself be interrogated by Maureen, the _do you remember when?_ starting up.

 

“Helen’s coming after her shift,” Floss says, looking up from her phone. “She’s says we better not dare to finish up before she gets here. She’s got a pay-rise, she’s in a celebrating mood.”

 

The door rings again, but rather than Helen it’s Dean - with Josh in tow, Aiden’s surprised but rather pleased to see. They’re holding hands.

 

No one, Aiden notices after a while, is asking Frank many questions. They are talking to him, but without requesting specifics on why he’s here, perhaps on purpose – maybe Henry’s had a dating pattern that some of this lot know more about than Aiden did. What is clear is that they’ve not met Frank before; this is definitely an early, if not first meeting between him and Henry, and Aiden, visiting the downstairs loo, sees some flowers in a vase in the bath, and puts two and two together and wants – not for the first time in his life – to give Henry a shake.

 

It’s easier than being angry with himself.  

 

Coming out of the bathroom, he runs into Frank in the hallway.

 

“Ah. Was just… reckon it’s time for me to be going now,” Frank mutters.

 

“Yeah, um,” Aiden steps back. “Are you staying somewhere in town? Long way back to Brewood at this time of night. Taxi might do it but it’d cost you. Or I suppose, do you need to get back for the farm?” He’s almost babbling – he wants to know, but he also needs Frank to stay here another minute, just a little longer, until Aiden can figure out something to say that’s right, that’s what he actually needs to get across.

 

Frank looks surprised. “I run the farm with my brother-in-law. Didn’t I mention that? He’ll be doing the work for the next couple of days, and then I cover for when he wants to go on holiday with my sister and the kids. We’ve got a system.”

 

“Right.”

 

“So, yeah, I’ve got a hotel room in town.”

 

“Just for tonight?”

 

“For a few nights.” Frank seems to force out a casual shrug. “Thought I might as well make a proper trip of it, after coming all this way. I didn’t have the highest hopes for this date, and we both know I’ve been proved right on that.”

 

Aiden swallows. His mouth is dry. “Well could I see you, while you’re here? Tomorrow, maybe?”

 

Frank folds his arms, frowns. “Really? What is this? Your idea of a good bloody deed or something?”

 

“It’s wanting to see you. Can I? Please?”

 

Frank stares at him for a long minute, blinking, clearly trying to make him out. Aiden is aware of quite acutely wanting to kiss him, and aware of how little that wish unsettles him anymore.

 

“Right. OK. Well, look, I’m tired and still a bit drunk,” Frank says slowly, still with an air of disbelief. “I’ll text you tomorrow.”

 

And Aiden has to be content with that.

 

\- - -

 

[318 Days Later]

 

_> OK if you still want to meet, tell me where to meet you_

 

Aiden does a silent fist pump when he gets the message. He’s been up since nine that morning, pottering about his flat cleaning things, and by the time Frank’s message comes through at half eleven, he’s been starting to try and make himself give up waiting for it.

 

He suggests a meeting point on a street near the city centre, a place that’s the venue this weekend for an international food market. He reckons sharing lunch might be easier walking along and grabbing something fast and portable than sitting opposite each other across a table again.

 

He’s all ready to head out when he realises he’s wearing his favourite jacket, which is to say the one he wore when he first met Frank in July. Maybe worrying about that is ridiculous, but he doesn’t want to imitate that day at all, and he goes back for a quick change. As a result he’s on time rather than early to their meeting point at a corner coffee shop, and he finds Frank there already, standing waiting, looking in the opposite direction.

 

Frank’s wearing a wide-striped black and white jumper and tight cut blue jeans. He’s got a nice arse. His hair is light and gold in the sunshine and Aiden can’t figure out how he ever thought in the first place that he was that unattractive. Objectively, fair enough, Frank’s not a Calvin Klein model in the making, but he’s handsome in a sort of angular, unexpected way, like a windswept rocky foreshore rather than a picture-postcard tropical beach.

 

_You’re too ugly for me, and you know it._

 

“Frank!” Aiden calls, forcing the jagged memory down, and jogs the rest of the way up to him. “Great to see you. You hungry yet?”

 

“Sure,” Frank answers, and gives him a tentative, rather bewildered smile.

 

“Excellent, let’s get to it then.”

 

They wander through the market stalls for a while, enjoying the sights and sounds. There are crafts as well as food, and Aiden picks up some embroidered cloth toy cats for his sisters’ next birthdays. Frank has an involved and technical discussion with the man at an organic sheep’s cheese stall. They both buy lunch from the vendor selling bizarre burgers – emu, kangaroo and squirrel meat, among others – and eat sitting on a bench, watching the world go by.

 

It’s weird, enjoying someone’s company like this, feeling the low-simmering bubble of attraction to them, and not thinking about the rest of the day in terms of places they could go to fuck. Aiden wants it, wants it more than he can remember wanting anyone, at least recently, but he’s glad of the talking, too.

 

“So yeah,” he finishes explaining. “If I keep on with the Healthcare Assistant job I could maybe get the QCF qualifications on the job, and use those as my way to the Nursing degree instead, but I don’t know if that’s the best route or not. It’s not the quickest, but I would be paid for longer.” He sighs, and takes a last swig of his bottle of lemonade. “I don’t really know what I want to be. Or to do.”

 

Frank nods, then smiles. “Nietzsche said: _To Do is To Be_. Kant said: _To Be is To Do_ , but Frank Sinatra, after whom I am named, said: _Do Be Do Be Do_.”

 

Aiden cackles, and covers his head in his hands. “My God. That’s dreadful.”

 

Frank just grins.

 

“And what about you, Mr Sinatra? You always want to be a farmer?”

 

“Well, my Dad always thought I would be. In the family, you know. When I came out, I thought he’d worry about it, about whether I was up to it, but he was more concerned about me not having kids, not passing the place on. When Nina – that’s my sister - married Paul, that sort of reassured him.”

 

“And this is Paul who shares the place with you now?”

 

“Yeah.” Frank shrugs. “It works pretty well, we get on. But he chose it. I didn’t, really. Not that I think I’d choose anything else, but sometimes I do wonder what I might have picked.”

 

“Still time.”

 

“Maybe.” Frank gets up from the bench. “How about trying the churros stall? I’ve always wondered what they taste like.”

 

Pausing for two helpings of what turns out to be delicious sugary fried dough, they wander on down the other side of the market, and a bit past it, and wind up next to the arts cinema.

 

“Oh wow,” Frank points at a poster in the window. “ _Maurice_! That was, like, the film of my adolescence. Maybe my favourite film ever.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Aiden looks more closely at the poster. “I’ve never seen it.”

 

“What? Oh God, you have to! It’s one of the most iconic gay films ever! And there’s Rupert Graves, so all other arguments are invalid.”

 

“Who’s that again?” Aiden asks.

 

“On the poster? With the ladder? Lestrade in _Sherlock_? You don’t mean… oh, very funny.”

 

Aiden giggles. “Fair enough, I shouldn’t miss anything with him in it. Hey,” he studies the showing times again. “You want to go now?”

 

Frank’s uncertain smile is maybe his loveliest. “OK? Sure.”

 

Aiden really hasn’t even heard of the film or the book it’s apparently based on. He has no idea what to expect.

 

Just under two hours later, back out on the pavement, Aiden doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

 

“Hey, you alright?” Frank asks, stepping closer. He just looks happy, almost bouncing on his toes.

 

“Yeah,” Aiden shakes his head quickly. “It’s just… With it being set in the past, and them all having such different lives from us, I just didn’t think… I didn’t think it would be so much like, like normal life. Like, how hard it would be for them, but not just because it was the past.”

 

“It ends well, though,” Frank points out. “That’s the point, even though it’s a hundred years ago, they get to be gay and happy.”

 

“Not Clive,” Aiden argues. “And I know Maurice and Alec were together, but they’d been proper twats to each other before that.”

 

“Well, I suppose so.” Frank’s closer again, and his voice is low. “But that happens sometimes, doesn’t it?”

 

Aiden takes a sharp breath. “It does,” he says, “and the people who do it can regret the hell out of it, because they were twats, the worst kind of twats, and that’s so… stupid and… and they can’t believe what they did.”

It’s getting later now, the evening light turned golden, in the air around them that receding sense of an ending Sunday, a last chance.

 

“So why did they do it, then?” Franks asks. “Why be like that, if it’s not what… if it’s not, maybe, who they are?”

 

“Because they’re afraid?” Aiden forces himself to hold Frank’s gaze. “Because they’re feeling something that’s new to them, and that scares them fucking stupid, and they’re bloody fucking cowards.”

 

Frank bites his lip. Aiden wants to reach out for him, and doesn’t know if that would be remotely welcome, and doesn’t think he can stand that much longer.

 

“Is that what you want from me?” Frank is asking. “Forgiveness?”

 

“I don’t think I deserve that.” Aiden clears his throat. “But, yes, I want things. I’d like to see you, to keep seeing you. Would you like to get some dinner?”

 

Frank takes a step back, and Aiden freezes. Frank stares at him again for a while before speaking, the moment drawing out, wire-tense.

 

“Today’s been great,” Frank says. “It has. But you of all people have got to understand why one day isn’t… I want this day to just stay good, not to push too far. I think I should go back to my hotel, and you should go home, or out, or whatever you want to do. And then, if nothing more comes of it all, we can say, OK, we were friends, we had a good day, one day.”

 

Aiden feels himself shrinking down, sinking just a little inside.

 

“I’m not your bloody road to Damascus,” Frank continues, heat in his voice now. “I’m not a charitable case. You said it yourself – being with me wouldn’t make you a better person.”

 

Aiden moves towards him, urgent. “No, you’d make me a better person. You do. You already have. You, the person I’ve not been able to stop thinking about since the 5th of July last year. For three hundred and eighteen days, and yes, I did count, I couldn’t stop myself.” He stops, laughs at little at himself, at all the bridges burning behind him.

 

“I’ve never felt like this before, and it does terrify me, and I’ve been a twat and I’m sure I’ll be again, but I’m asking for another chance all the same. Not because I deserve it, but because it’s all I can do.”

 

He’s still not touching Frank. There’s only the words forming a link between them, as they stand on the pavement, people milling past them on either side, unconcerned, unaware.

 

“I still don’t think we should have dinner today,” Frank says, slowly. “But,” and he raises his hand, rests it on Aiden’s arm. “I could come back here. Not next weekend, but the one after? And we could see?”

 

Aiden can’t quite keep from gasping with relief. “Sure. Great. Unless – I mean, if you don’t want to travel all the way, I could come to you?”

 

Frank smiles. “As much as I love the wildly varied restaurant scene in Brewood, I’ve done it to death. No, I’m coming here.”

 

“OK. Well, can I walk you home?”

 

“OK.” Frank murmurs back. They’re still smiling at each other.

 

Frank kisses him goodbye outside his hotel. Just quick, a brush of their lips.

 

It feels amazing. 

 

\- - -

 

[331 Days Later]

 

Aiden’s waiting in the bar area of the restaurant they’ve picked for their reunion, seated on a sofa right by the main window, near the entrance door. It’s a South American place, tapas and burritos and a great range of cocktails – he’s looking forward to introducing Frank to it.

 

Exchanging texts in the process of choosing their eatery, arguing the advantages of different cuisines, has been for Aiden a wonderful excuse to stay in touch over the past twelve days; every message from Frank had made him excited out of all proportion. He’s sure he’s behaving like some kind of lovestruck parody, like everything he’d never understood how other people could be. But now, living it, it feels so good.

 

He’s made sure to be here ahead of time, and now he picks a speck off the sleeve of his new, blue leather jacket, and double checks the laces on his trainers. He wants everything tonight to be just right.

 

“Aiden! Mate! Didn’t know you were out tonight!”

 

Aiden winces, and turns round, heart sinking. Coming in through the restaurant door, loud and laughing, having presumably spotted him through the window, are none other than Jase, Taylor and Harry.

 

“Lads,” he says, and feels his stomach tense.

 

“You’re not eating alone?” Taylor asks, raising his eyebrow.

 

“No, I’m meeting someone if you must know.” Aiden sighs, folds his arms. “He’s going to be here any minute, actually, so if you wouldn’t mind…”

 

“Ooh, really? This I want to see.” Jase sits down on the long, low sofa, stretching out, grinning widely.

 

“Come on guys, please?” Aiden looks over his shoulder; still no sign of Frank. “Just leave it, OK? This is important.”

 

“Wow.” Jase lets out a low whistle. “Well this I must see. Must be something really special if you’re keeping him this secret. A stunner you don’t want to share with the rest of us? Now that’s not fair, is it?”

 

Aiden looks at his watch. Practically eight o’clock now. Frank might be late, of course, but Aiden’s not known him to be yet.

 

“Tell you the truth, I was worried about you last month, mate,” Jase is continuing. “With that ginger kid. But I thought, he knows what he’s doing, Aiden does, he’ll have a long game. And now this bloke, this ‘important’ one. Heh, good to have you back to your old self.”

 

“Yeah, well. I’ve changed a bit recently, I reckon.” Aiden only mutters the words. He doesn’t want a fight, he just wants the boys to go the fuck away from his evening.

 

“Hey, guys?” Harry pipes up now – he never sat down, and shifts now, gesturing at the door. “Maybe we’d better leave him to it.”

 

“No way, I want to see.” Jase grins, and then holds up his hands placatingly. “Just to see, just quickly and then we’ll leave, I promise.”

 

‘What do they want to see, exactly?” says a voice behind Aiden, and he twists round to see Frank standing there, his face pink, his eyes already full of hurt.

 

“Frank!” Aiden knows his first expression must be surprise, and maybe even a wince, because he doesn’t want to expose Frank to this, but it’s not the first impression, it’s what you follow it with, he knows that now, if nothing else.

 

“Frank,” he says again, standing up and going to him, pulling him into a hug, a long one, running a hand up Frank’s neck and into his hair. Even now, even with the crap going down around them, just touching him again warms Aiden through. “It’s so good to see you. Been waiting for this.” He gestures with a tilt of his head: “These idiots spotted me and thought they’d try to be funny. They’re just leaving.”

 

“Like, wait.” Jase, still fucking sitting there like he’s at a theatre show, holds up his hands. “What the fuck? _That_? Really?”

 

“Guys, this is Frank.” Aiden takes his hand, draws him forward. “He’s my date tonight. Frank, this is Jase, Taylor and Harry. And like I said,” he continues in a low but clear voice, “because I don’t want to interrupt my evening any more, I’m not going to say I’ll fucking kick them out if I have to, but hopefully they know that anyway.”

 

Harry steps forward, and Aiden tenses. But, “Alright, Frank?” Harry says, reaching to shake his hand, which after a moment Frank accepts. “I’m sorry about this, we just crashed in, should have listened when Aiden said this was important. Come on lads,” he says loudly, and gives Jase a shoulder slap. “Let’s leave them to it.”

 

“Whatever, God.” Jase stands up and walks past, Taylor in tow. “No one will believe me. Fuck.”

 

“Bye,” Harry adds, shrugging apologetically.

 

Aiden puts his back to them, and turns to face Frank, who still looks upset and uneasy, and no bloody surprise.

 

“I’m sorry, Frank. They just turned up. I tried to make them go.”

 

“But you couldn’t. And so they saw you. And me.” Frank bites his lip, stares up at him. “Do you mind?”

 

“I mind that I seem to have been friends with a bunch of utter dicks all this time. I mind that they upset you. But otherwise, no, I couldn’t care.”

 

“You told them I was important?”

 

“Yeah.” Aiden can feel himself blushing. “Because you are.”

 

Frank looks at the door. “That one Harry seemed OK.” He turns back, mouth catching into a smile, just. “But I’d rather look at you, I’ll be honest.”

 

The meal is easy, the two of them crowded close over a small table, sharing and swapping food, conversation coming easily as it always has. Aiden is conscious of their feet and legs grazing under the table; it’s too public for anything major, and he’s not sure it’s the time, but when Frank’s ankle nudges up against his own and doesn’t move, Aiden catches his eye and feels the heat again, spiking right through him, and has to look away before he does something that will get them kicked out before their dessert. And having seen Frank eat churros, he’s dying to see what expression he makes for white chocolate ginger cheesecake.

 

It’s like an ache in Aiden’s chest, the bittersweet kind, like the end of crying when you start to feel better or the way he feels when Amy crawls into his arms to be cuddled, or the moment when the sun comes out. Being with Frank is all of that, only richer, deeper. Aiden can’t rationalise it at all, and he wonders if maybe that’s half the point.

 

They linger over their food and then their drinks as long as the waiting staff will let them. Aiden isn’t sure where the evening will go next, and when talking is so pleasant, he’s almost afraid to make a change. If Frank wants to go out for more drinks, go clubbing, he’ll agree of course, but that’s not what he’s hoping for.

 

When they do get outside to the street, Frank turns to him and looks up; they’re standing close.

 

“Walk me home again?” Frank asks.

 

Aiden is pretty sure his feelings are written clear across his face. He’s not all sure that’s a bad thing. “Sure.”

 

This time, Frank doesn’t turn to say goodnight at the hotel entrance. Just gives a shy smile as they cross the threshold and keeps going, Aiden following every step of the way. Frank presses the button to call the lift, and Aiden finds himself studying the weird stone with veins of something sparkling that tiles the floor, anything to keep his hands to himself till they’re in private.

 

He’s been here before – done this before, with Frank. Done any number of things with any number of other people. But it feels entirely different all the same. New. Mouth-dryingly thrilling.

 

They make it to Frank’s hotel room, and Frank turns to face him, and Aiden whispers something, asks permission – or means to, if he can get the words out – but Frank’s kissing him before he breathes again.

 

Frank is so beautiful in so many places. In the arch of his foot, the curve of his elbow, the quiver of his belly. In the sensitive curves of his neck, in the pebbling of his nipples under Aiden’s hands, in the grip of his hand on Aiden’s cock, sending him frenzied. Aiden’s thought of elaborate fantasies, of wish-lists, but all that really seems necessary is to touch and keep touching, hold and keep holding, and to kiss Frank and kiss him again, again, until it goes blinding-brilliant all around them, and they collapse down together.

 

Frank’s lying on his side next to him, head propped on one hand, tracing his pale fingers over Aiden’s chest. Aiden shivers, and feels his blood gathering again, readying him for another round. Frank even smells good – not of anything in particular, or no one thing, no doubt mostly sweat like most people, but for some reason to Aiden it’s intoxicating.

 

“So, now you’ve had your fun,” Frank asks, his tone light but his eyes focused. “Are you still interested in me? Because I have wondered if this was all about, you know, the unattainable, and the challenge, or whatever the women’s magazines are calling it these days.”

 

“Well, I don’t read women’s magazines, so I wouldn’t know,” Aiden says seriously, and then gasps and flaps out his hands after Frank twists his nipple. “Really, though,” he adds when they’ve stopped wrestling – touching had occupied them for quite an interval, there, because they fit together, they just do – “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. It’s you I want.”

 

Frank’s breathing heavily too, but he holds Aiden’s gaze. “Right, well. This probably sounds a bit mad after one date, one night, but even if this was all we had, even if you see someone else you like more tomorrow: please don’t cheat on me. Don’t lie to me. You said, before, that that’s what you always do. Well, don’t.”

 

“I’ve never lied to you,” Aiden says slowly. “That’s the weird thing. You’re the only person I’ve ever told the absolute truth too. And yet you’re still here.”

 

They’re quiet for a while longer, touching and kissing, and then, somehow, suddenly, the angle of Frank’s tongue in his mouth makes Aiden flush with heat again, urgent and desperate, and this time he keeps it together enough to follow a plan, to get between Frank’s legs and suck his cock for a while before moving lower, licking at his balls and then down to his hole, rimming him till he’s whining to be fucked, and giving him everything he asks for.

 

It’s still brilliant-bright, and Aiden still almost can’t breathe with it, with how happy he feels.

 

\- - -

 

[333 Days Later]

 

Frank really should leave now, to catch his train, but Aiden kisses him once more.

 

“So, same time next week, yeah?” he says again, just to have an excuse to keep Frank a moment longer, talking, near him. “Hey, I picked up a showing times leaflet for that cinema. They’ve got some new features now. Do you like _The Color Purple_?”

 

“The film? Yeah, I love it,” Frank says, and then smiles slightly, and laughs.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing. Just a random thought. Of all the things to get right about you.” He kisses Aiden on the cheek and hugs him once more again, tight.

 

\- - -

 

[338 Days Later]

 

Charles is despondent today. Since his time in hospital his moods have darkened more often, and he spends more time staring into the middle distance, or making very detailed lists of the problems of his plants. Aiden’s tried to start a conversation about the mobile library that visits the home, or the new series about the Battle of Britain airing on the _Yesterday_ channel, but neither has provoked much response.

 

Finally Aiden puts his biro down and sighs.

 

“Well, I have to leave you now. Go and go clothes shopping, as it happens. Because, you know what I’m doing this weekend? I met someone, and I asked him to give me a chance to prove I could be worth it. Asked if I could try and convince him. And he gave me a chance. And I’m seeing him again tonight.”

 

Charles grunts. “That’s nice for you.”

 

“No interrogation?”

 

Making another dismissive noise, Charles shrugs and looks up at him. “You want advice on your love life from a decrepit old man like me?”

 

Aiden holds his gaze, nods. “I need your advice. You know better than me. You knew better than me a year ago and I couldn’t have come this far without you. And I want to get this right, I really do, and I’m hoping you can help me.”

 

Charles clears his throat. “Hah. As if you young people ever really listen.” But he smiles. “So, this young man of yours, he must be quite… would you say you feel like he answers the question you’ve always been asking?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”

 

Charles nods, makes an approving tut. “Well don’t worry then, my lad, you’re alright from here.”

 

Aiden goes and kneels in front of his chair. “But you’ll give me some help, yeah? Some of the good tips?”

 

Charles starts chuckling.

 

\- - -

 

[363 Days Later]

 

“So what I want to know,” Aiden says, as he leans over Frank’s stomach, kissing at it randomly, learning every inch. “Is whether Sunday counts as our one month anniversary or as our one year? Because a month is just chocolates or flowers, really, but for a year I could have the excuse I need to get you the correct version of _Star Wars_ on blu-ray.”

 

Frank raises an eyebrow. “Or we could have another argument about how what George Lucas did to those films in 1999 did not constitute ‘correcting’ them.”

 

“Also,” Aiden says, more slowly, eyes lowered. “I was wondering if sometime you’d like to come to Wales, meet some of my family. I’ve not… I’ve never taken anyone home, not before. I never wanted to, when I didn’t think there’d be anyone who’d stick around, but now… I mean, it’s only been a month, I know, but…”

 

He feels the touch of Frank’s fingers on his cheek, tilting his chin up so their eyes meet.

 

“How many days?” Frank asks him.

 

“Three hundred and sixty five, this Sunday,” Aiden says, after a moment’s mental arithmetic.

 

“A year.” Frank murmurs. “And mostly a fucking crappy one, pleasant developments aside.” He leans in and drops a kiss on Aiden’s head. “I’d love to meet your family. Be a good way to start the next three hundred and sixty five days off on a good note.”

  
Aiden rolls them over, kisses Frank again. They’re in Aiden’s flat, still in bed mid-morning, with the windows open and the warm breeze drifting through.

 

It’s summer again.

 

\- - -


End file.
